In Memoriam for Twitter, or X, or Whatever

We showed up, back in the day, because we loved books. We wanted to meet other people like us. To be where the conversation was happening.

Call the place by whatever corporate name you like—in 2009 it was a café in cyberspace.  A place where we got together and chatted and where distinctions in status didn’t seem to matter. I was a freelance journalist in my twenties, eking out a living in Jerusalem while I struggled to write my first novel. To make rent, I interviewed Israeli scientists about their discoveries, NGO founders about their coexistence projects, and visiting artists about their work.

The rest of the time, I wrote my novel. I read Kindle books on my parents’ castoff iPod with its cracked screen—obtaining books any other way was nigh impossible—and afterwards, found myself yearning to write thoughts down. This became a regular (unpaid) book review gig at the Huffington Post. And naturally, at the literary café in cyberspace (yes, Twitter), I shared links to my reviews.  

I wrote a review on the Huffington Post of Famous Author’s new book. Famous Author followed me. There was, as yet, no blue check to distinguish the Somebodies like him from the Nobodies. We exchanged banter. Later, when “likes” were instituted, he liked one of my tweets about the craziness of the GOP. I hoped, back then, that if I continuously signaled that I was on the “good” side of American politics, my more inconvenient views would be forgiven. It was a cute idea.  

Famous Author followed me for several years, through several moves—from Jerusalem to New York, from New York to rural Pennsylvania. He put me on a list of people with good book recommendations—a distinction I cherished. When my novel was acquired by Macmillan, he issued a gracious congratulations. When his new book came out, I reviewed it, this time in a prestigious publication. He wasn’t the only blue check to follow me, but he may have been the most famous. I think, at the back of my mind, I preserved the hope that I was socially acceptable, in part, because Famous Author was following me. How beyond the pale could I be if he was still there, in the “Follows You” column?  

Then one day during the pandemic, I tweeted something about Israel. I lost a follower immediately. That, in itself, is standard—every tweet about Israel has its price. But this time, I had been unfollowed by Famous Author.

He was not the first blue check, nor the last, to leave my life in this way. This past weekend, my response to Iran’s attack on Israel was to retweet Democratic politicians who support Israel. Immediately, I lost a follower. Another author—admittedly less famous, though very Twitter famous—whose book I had reviewed, who had followed me before he got his blue check. As with Famous Author, we had exchanged friendly words, in the course of the decade that we were connected. In the blink of an eye—or the click of a keypad—that connection was gone.

And I thought about relationships and what it meant to have had the experience of the café back in the day. These people had never been my friends, but there was something about the experience of the café until 2011, or so, that was all we’d been promised about the internet. Status barriers would be leveled. We would connect to others on the pure basis of what was in our minds, or what our interests were. It was before people felt compelled to make an official statement about the issue of the day, painstakingly calibrating that statement to affirm their presence on the right side of history. Because they had read the room. Because fascism is on the rise, and its threat comes primarily, and above all, from the wrong sort of Biden voter. (I.e., the moderate sort.)

 I doubt we’ll ever have a space quite like that café again. It deserves a memorial plaque, or something. Instead, we’ll just pretend Elon killed it. The reality is, it died around a decade earlier, but kept lurching forward, transformed from café to a sort of corporate boardroom where personal and political brands were being continuously—and exhaustively—litigated.

And who were we to argue that it was dead? Famous people and star journalists were having the time of their lives. If you could stir up enough anger at an unpopular target, you could become a star, or at least feel like one, as long as you never left the boardroom.  

I look up from the screen, to a view of woods, unspooling in all directions. To a stillness marred only by the occasional drill of a woodpecker. In the sky, a V of geese arrows toward the nearby wetlands; the place where, later on, the frogs come out to sing.

The café was a dream, and there is a bittersweet quality to awakening.

I go outside.