https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-new-economics-of-twitter-outrage
"On the off-chance you haven’t heard the term “the main character of Twitter,”
it’s a simple way of describing the experience of posting something — or being
posted about — on Twitter and having that snowball into a trending topic. The
term comes from a 2019 tweet by the user @maplecocaine, who wrote, “Each day on
twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.”
The main character effect isn’t unique to Twitter. It happens on Tumblr, on
Reddit, probably on Pinterest? But the speed and ferocity and, most
importantly, the irl impact of becoming a main character on Twitter is
unparalleled. Caught the attention of an angry mob on Tumblr? Maybe avoid Hot
Topic’s and Twenty One Pilot shows for a while. Caught the attention of
Twitter? You’ll absolutely end up with a
New York Post article (or multiple)
being written about you at the bare minimum. You’ll also almost certainly lose
your job — though, you may end up with a better one. It’s a real crapshoot.
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter can be viewed through a bunch of different
prisms. There’s the theory that he’s just a bored idiot. He might also
genuinely think it could become the content feed that links humanity together
as we traverse the cosmos. But you could also view Musk’s tenure at Twitter as
a concerted effort from Silicon Valley’s elite at, if not reigning in the main
character effect, trying to harness it. Before Musk, anyone could become a main
character — world leaders, actors, activists, random teenagers. And, after
Musk, that’s still true, but the scales have been significantly tipped and this
month there were two main character incidents that illustrate this perfectly."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
