Tomorrow marks six months since billionaire anime fan and certified shitposter Elon Musk bought Twitter. While many people were sure the purchase would be a disaster, to my mind the Twitter platform has held up remarkably well. Let’s take a look at what’s good and what’s bad about Twitter six months later!
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How Has Twitter Held Up Over the Past Six Months?
As I wrote in my post explaining why J-List would stay on Twitter, I consider the service to be “the last, best hope for social media.” Unlike YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, fans can post anime clips or songs without getting automated copyright strikes by soulless corporate bots. It allows for anonymous social interactions, which is important for some countries like Japan. Artists can post and promote their work to fans, and can share anime boobs without the world ending. There’s really nothing like Twitter for anime fans.
And how has the site held up since Elon Musk took over? It’s been…pretty good. About the same, for the average user. Some things broke, and Mac users had to say goodbye to their beloved third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Twitterific. I made some changes in my workflow and carried on as usual with the official Twitter app.
I’m happy to say that J-List’s engagement on Twitter is higher than it was six months ago, with more followers (250k currently) and some of my posts blowing up with fans if they liked my content. While J-List’s Facebook page is still more important to us as a company, the 1.5 million followers we have there somehow translate to as few as 6,000 views per post, especially if I’ve written a thoughtful, nuanced article, rather than something spammy like “10 Reasons Netflix is Killing Anime. You Won’t Believe #7!”
Sigh.
Twitter, like Tumblr, is best if you aggressively self-curate the accounts you’re interested in…and make sure to avoid anyone spreading hate or negativity. Anime Twitter, Cosplay Twitter, Science Twitter, even Finance Twitter are great places to meet like-minded people and share ideas, and I use these every day.
But humans are easily manipulated, and we should always remember that politicians or Russian provocateurs are ready and willing to twist our emotions with bad information to suit their own goals. The best approach is to not follow anyone like this at all, to avoid getting caught up in someone’s “Internet rage engine.” Remember also that humans are subject to confirmation bias, always seeing what we expect to see rather than what’s actually there.
But What About People Whose Politics I Don’t Like?
Social media has been a great thing overall, but it has one terrible side effect: it allows us to cocoon ourselves into silos where we only see the views of like-minded people. Seeing ideas we agree with gives our brains a shot of oxytocin, whereas seeing political views from the other side of the aisle causes the opposite chemical reaction in our brains. In the same way that I am literally unable to not eat a whole bag of Frito-Lay Salt and Soy Sauce popcorn because of the effect it has on my brain, we automatically build shells around us filled with people (or Twitter accounts) that we already agree with.
Did the Nazis and racists take over Twitter, as many predicted? Not that I’ve seen. Yes, there are probably more tweets from people whose mothers would smack them if they saw the things they were writing, but they’re easy to ignore. To paraphrase Mac blogger John Gruber, “Having more racist tweets is like having twice as many people peeing in a public pool. It’s not optimal, but it’s not that big a deal in the end because the pool is so big.”
Fingers Crossed Things Don’t Go to Hell
Of course, things are far from perfect. The company has recently turned off the Verified account system, which means I’ve lost my blue check, which I earned the hard way. We don’t know how this drama will play out, but hopefully, things will stabilize soon.
(I do pay for Twitter Blue because it lets me upload higher-res videos to the platform, plus I want to support the company because I want them to succeed.)
What do J-List Customers Say About Elon’s Twitter?
From my experience, it’s largely the same, but I don’t really look at much politics or celebrity stuff here. Which seems to have become the most toxic part of the site.
100% correct. Remember all those people that were leaving for telegram? Yeah, they’re still here on Twitter.
When I go to look at trends it’s actually trends or stuff I might kinda be curious about instead of some hyper-politicized piece. But mostly Twitter is the same. Seeing how many people viewed my posts is nice.
Since I don’t watch random posts, but only follow like 8 people, nothing really changed for me.
Twitter seems better to me. The Twitter mobile app still needs to add more features to catch up to the older 3rd party clients that are no longer useable.
No, it’s *definitely* a lot worse. There’s just nowhere better to go right now. Technical errors are cropping up more and more (such as notifications not working), Musk’s behavior is increasingly erratic and juvenile (“69% Government Funded”), and some of the worst people are seeing their voices amplified. The verification mess in particular is going to be extremely harmful.
I still see anime boobs on my feed. So I don’t have anything to complain about.
For me, Twitter is the same old same, now just with memes that Musk is destroying Twitter 😀
Thanks for reading this blog post exploring how the Twitter platform has held up over the past six months. We hope you’ll follow the official J-List account, and my own personal account, and share opinions and memes about the latest and greatest anime. And make sure to tell us what you think of Twitter and Elon Musk in the comments!
Also, follow J-List on these social media platforms:
- Twitter, where Peter posts anime booba for you
- Facebook, where we share memes and discuss anime
- Instagram, for fans who want to keep up with J-List products in your Insta timeline
- Discord, if you want to chat with other J-List customers of culture
- Finally, check out J-List’s new short video blogs on YouTube or TikTok!
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