TWITTER MUST DIE
John Dog's latest is a witty, scathing, electric folk song about everybody’s favourite social media hellscape. Wait - when you say "everybody’s…"
"So which media-themed screed do you like to sing along to?"
An interesting fact about Twitter/X that is often overlooked is how relatively few people use it compared to other social/online platforms. While Facebook, for example has around 3 billion monthly active users, and YouTube has around 2.5 billion, Twitter has just 350 million. This may still sound like a lot of people. However, another quirk of Twitter, again rarely commented on, is that just 10% of its users produce 80% per cent of its content. That means that Twitter - rather than being a representative chunk of the population or the “public square” some claim it to be - is really something closer to a niche activity.
But how can that be, you might ask, for whenever I consume news, it seems I’m never more than seconds away from a reference to Twitter? How can something used by so few people dominate news to the degree that this platform does? Well, that may come down to the final stat that we will offer here.
As we’ve discovered, a very small percentage of regular people use Twitter regularly. However, even a passing familiarity with the platform will assure you that something approaching 100% of journalists do.
However, journalism is only one of a number of professions listed in the final verse of John Dog’s new song. The song momentarily idles its propulsive electro-folk engine to deliver a list of people Dog claims keep the platform alive. “Academics and athleticists [sic]/Entertainers and their publicists/Every minister and journalist/Sad-sack musicians who sing songs like this/basically every kind of narcissist”.
With that line and the rest of that verse, the listener is assured of least two things; one, Dog’s not placing himself above anyone else in song - far from it, he’s flat out copping to being a Twitter junkie and a narcissist.
Two, Dog has learned - the hard way - what it seems the vast majority of humans on earth already seem to know: Twitter kinda sucks and most people probably don’t really need it in their life. And if you're one of those people who can't stop using it, if you find yourself on Twitter when you don’t want to be - “always insisting that you’re in control/as you scroll and scroll and scroll” - then it may say something about you that you don’t want to hear.
Thank you for coming to our Ted Talk! Twitter Must Die streams on August 22nd, with a video to follow on September 13th.
A few words from my old media professor
We asked Prof. Brian O'Blivion, the fictional character from the 1983 film Videodrome, to share his thoughts on John Dog's upcoming song, Twitter Must Die. Here is his unedited, entirely made-up, response:
"Television, of which I am made, has itself been absorbed.
The sound of its demise is not that of vibrating air, but that of the undulating information plane.
Twitter is anxiety at high frequency, trepidation at maximum efficiency, delivered to your home at the speed of light.
The singer suggests that he is above this noise, the ambient sound of an unending newsflash, terror in homeostasis.
And yet he admits - as all dancing sprites and waveforms should - that he is merely one of innumerable data points aspiring to appear in Twitter’s dreams."
Brian O'Blivion is a creation of David Cronenberg and respectfully borrowed here under (fingers crossed) parody fair usage. No televisions were harmed in the writing of this nonsense.
Twitter Must Die
Lyric by Raymond Butler
Have you heard it decreed?
This is a joyous day indeed
Twitter Must Die
Twitter Must Die
Twitter Must Die
As if from an awful dream
the world awoke amid a scream of
Twitter Must Die
Twitter Must Die
Twitter Must Die
Setting aside the usual rivalries
the United Nations has proclaimed
For petty crimes against humanity
Twitter will be shot in the brain, set on fire and thrown from a plane
Yes, it’s for your own good
You disagree, but then you would
Twitter Must Die
Twitter Must Die
Twitter Must Die
We pleaded, we cajoled
But you were busy being trolled
Now Twitter Must Die
Twitter Must Die
Twitter Must Die
Like poor old Smeagol and his precious ring
Or a devotee of crack cocaine
You were enchanted by the wretched thing
Always insisting that you’re in control
As you scroll and scroll and scroll
And scroll
Have you heard you won’t believe
There’s been a last minute reprieve
Now Twitter Won’t Die
Twitter Won’t Die
Twitter Won’t Die
As its head was in the noose
A mob arrived to cut it loose
Now Twitter Won’t Die
Twitter Won’t Die
Twitter Won’t Die
But it wasn’t some old bunch of anarchists
Who set the old big blue bird free
But academics and athleticists
Entertainers and their publicists
Every minister and journalist
Sad sack musicians who sing songs like this
Basically every kind of narcissist
So I fear we may never be freed
From this intellectual human centipede
Twitter won’t die die die die die die die
Die die die die die
Twitter won’t die die die die die die die
Die die die die die