I read a lot of news articles, and I've noticed an irritating trend that must stop immediately. In all honesty, perhaps what people say on social media platforms should not be news unless it's someone like a politician or a celebrity. It never ceases to disgust me when I see articles quoting regular people. How is that news? If I wanted to find out all the important details of, say, Israel vs. Hamas, should I just go down to the local Hobby Lobby and ask Chuck, the custodian? But then again, we know my feelings on the death of journalism, and this is yet another symptom.
But what I'm really talking about is X in particular. I've personally taken to calling it Ex, which makes a lot of sense to me, but every single news desk in the world (if we still have news desks, I have my doubts) seems insistent on doing this one fucking thing that bugs the shit out of me.
If a "journalist" is going to quote someone on Ex, it must be one of the Golden Rules of Journalism (up there with Who, What, Where, When, Why and Cover Your Ass, thank you Dr. Wiginton) is that they must refer to it as "X, the platform formerly known as Twitter." There is sometimes a variation, like, "X, formerly Twitter," but this is getting out of hand.
I get it. I don't really want to call it X either because it's stupid. It's the idiocy of a middle-aged rich white dude who thinks he's cool and edgy. Explore your midlife crisis someplace where we can't see it, please. But for fuck's sake, how long are we going to continue doing this? Is there anyone with an internet connection who *doesn't* know that Twitter is now X? If you were writing a story about Elon Musk, would you mention every time he fucking takes a breath? Fuck no, you wouldn't. So why are we doing this?
You know I'm frustrated when I ask that question. And you'll never know how deeply that frustration runs because I'm never going to get an answer that makes sense. Because a lot of what we do doesn't make sense, but we're not going to stop it because fuck it. Why would we?
All right. I'm going to bed. If I can get through tomorrow without reading about how X was formerly Twitter, that would be grand. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
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