I’ve been a heavy user of Twitter since opening the J-List account way back in 2008, and it’s really helped J-List stay in close contact with our many customers of culture. Although it’s far from perfect, let’s explore why there’s no real alternative to Twitter for anime fans who want to stay connected with each other.
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The State of Anime Twitter in 2026
It’s 2026, and the world around us is literally on fire. We’ve got HD fiber optic video of war in our YouTube feeds and anxiety about what future changes AI will bring. And now, we’re all learning that the blockading of trade routes George Lucas tried to warn us about 27 years ago are pretty important to the world. But don’t worry! When we’re stressed, we can pop open our Twitter/X app and see some cute cats playing the piano, or maybe a video clip of anime boobs the J-List account just posted
It’s been three and a half years since Elon Musk and his billionaire friends bought the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, now still known as Twitter by almost everyone. While I wasn’t happy about some of the changes the platform made since then, I’ve openly defended Twitter as “the last best hope for social media.” I thought I’d write a follow-up piece giving my thoughts on Twitter in 2026, and the anime Twitter community specifically. And some common-sense ways we can keep from getting manipulated by unsavory actors on the platform.
The Case for Twitter in 2026
Let’s go through what’s genuinely “good” about using Twitter/X for members of the anime community.
The best way to get up-to-date info. Love it or hate it, Twitter is a great way to get information that’s up to date. If I want to follow the war news, I can search for it on Twitter and read what’s going on right now. (Note: make sure to sort by Latest, not Top.) If I want to see why my stock just dropped, I can search the ticker and see what others are saying.
It’s the best place to follow Japanese artists and anime studios. Japanese fans especially love the anonymity Twitter offers, and there are many users on the platform. Pretty much every Japanese artist I can think of is also on Twitter, pumping out art for fans to react to and advertising their next doujin event.
In addition to anime Twitter, there are many solid communities like cosplay Twitter, finance Twitter, and so on.
Sexy content is allowed. If you think back to the dawn of the Internet, the whole reason we have fast Internet is because we wanted to look at boobs faster. And ecchi memes and visuals are a valid part of anime fandom that no one has the right to take away. If we didn’t have Twitter, we’d all be living in a Zuckerberg-owned hellscape where posting a single anime pantyshots or ecchi fan-edit would get an account — which represents thousands of hours of hard work — deleted immediately.
The Bad: What Sucks About Modern Twitter
You have to pay for reach. Although I earned my “verified” blue check the old way, through hard work building a community around the J-List Twitter account, in the post-Musk era everyone who wants to reach their followers in large numbers needs to be a paid subscriber. That’s okay for a business like me, but less fun for casual users.
Engagement is falling. Sadly, engagement with users doesn’t seem to be improving on Twitter. There’s no way to know how much of this is from automated bots, or if people who want to react and comment to every post have moved on to TikTok.
UK and Australian users must verify their ages. Last summer, the news hit that Twitter had stopped showing posts from certain accounts until the users went through some kind of age verification process. This is despite the fact that anyone on the planet can Google “double fisted anal” and see results immediately. There are naturally many workarounds for the age verification, including one weird trick! Keep reading to find out what it is.
The “Following” feed is sorted by Grok. What do we want? To see posts by accounts we follow in chronological order as they are posted. What do we get instead? Another algorithm, this time Grok, which tries to predict which posts you’ll engage with and show you those. (Artist: Maenchu.)
The Really Bad
Of course, there’s bad, and there’s really bad. John Oliver recently did an episode of his Last Week Tonight exploring some of the worst aspects of Twitter. For example, government officials starting official investigations based on demonstrably inaccurate information they got from the platform.
Then there’s the way Twitter is regularly turned into a tool of misinformation by authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, who’s been waging an information war on the West since 2014, using social media. No matter what side of the political aisle you’re on, if you’ve been mad at someone on the Internet over the past ten years, a nonzero amount of that was manipulated by Russia and other sinister countries.
Why was J-List forced to stop posting to Facebook? Read all about it here!
How Can We Make Twitter Better?
We might disagree about what policies our governments should be pursuing. But I think we can agree that users pretending to be Americans but who seem to live in the St. Petersburg time zone, trying to manipulate our opinions and politics, should all fuck right off. But how can Twitter users protect themselves?
A good place to start is to never, ever look at the “For You” tab, which is filled with the most vile kind of video clips to make you angry, which keeps you scrolling. Save your sanity by never letting an algorithm choose what content to show you.
Another way to improve Twitter might be a Google Chrome plug-in called Control Panel for Twitter (Chrome Web Store link), which “fixes” what’s wrong with the site. It makes your default timeline “Following” so you only see posts by people you care about, and hides a lot of the features that try to addict you to using the platform. This works on all Chrome installs running on proper Macs or PCs, though not on mobile. (Safari users, here’s a link for you, and one for Firefox users, too.)
Thanks for reading this blog post exploring the current state of Twitter in 2026, and how anime fans can enjoy sharing anime boobs and pantsu without being manipulated by evil oligarchs. Are you still on Twitter, or have you moved on? Tell us in the comments!
Let’s Chat
You made it to the end of this post! Thank you! As a token of our appreciation, enjoy an extra 5% off your next order when you use the code BLOG at checkout. Also, don’t forget to follow J-List on all our platforms!
- Twitter / X, where Peter posts anime booba for you
- Bluesky, where we post several times a day
- Facebook, where we used to share memes and discuss anime
- Discord, if you want to chat with other J-List customers of culture
No girlfriend? No problem! April 14 is Black Day in South Korea, when single men mark the occasion by eating black noodles. They missed out on Valentine’s Day chocolate on February 14, and had no one to give white chocolate to on White Day, March 14, but so April 14 is their day! J-List is celebrating with a huge 15% sale on all Japan-based products through April 20. Start browsing now!
