138/ We Need To Talk About Twitter w/ Musa Okwonga and Justin Salhani
The Fire These Times: Voices from the Periphery - A podcast by The Fire These Times - Fridays
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After some 12 years on the site, I've finally deleted my Twitter account. Its takeover by a profoundly narcissistic, mediocre and insecure bigot gave me that extra excuse I'd been looking for all these years. But why does any of that matter? After all, isn't it 'just a website'? Yes. And no. Whether you are an activist or a scholar or a journalist or a policy-maker, Twitter has had an undeniable influence over your life - even if you've never been on it. I was a very active user of that site. I gathered some 34,000 followers, had my tweets featured in mainstream media dozens of times, and made a lot of friends. Twitter is also how a lot of my work got published, and how so many people even heard about me in the first place. For that, I'll be forever grateful. But still, I quit it, and I ain't going back. I've reached this conclusion after many years of deliberation. Weighing the pros (exposure, networking, connections etc) and cons (addiction, restlessness, a huge waste of time etc). I don't know whether this is the right decision for everyone (although at this rate the site might become irrelevant soon enough anyway) and in many ways this conversation isn't even about that. I invited returning guests Musa Okwonga and Justin Salhani to talk about the impacts of social media on our world, with a focus on Twitter. You can support The Fire These Times on patreon.com/firethesetimes with a monthly or yearly donation and get a lot of perks including early access, exclusive videos, monthly hangouts, access to the book club, merch and more. Mentions Center for Countering Digital Hate: Twitter fails to act on 99% of Twitter Blue accounts tweeting hate The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok by Cory Doctorow Wilder Winds by Bel Olid The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula Le Guin The Lonely City by Olivia Laing Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake Contact You can follow The Fire These Times on: Website | Bluesky | Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | Substack You can follow Joey on: Website | Instagram | Bluesky | Mastodon, or reach out to him via email at [email protected] You can follow Musa on: Website | Bluesky | Twitter | Instagram You can follow Justin on: Website | Bluesky | Twitter | Instagram Episode Credits Host: Joey AyoubProducer: Joey AyoubMusic: Rap and RevengeMain theme design: Wenyi GengSound editor: Joey AyoubEpisode design: Joey Ayoub
