www.wired.com Open in urlscan Pro
151.101.2.194  Public Scan

Form analysis
0 forms found in the DOM

Text Content

Skip to main content

Open Navigation Menu
Menu
Story Saved

To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.

Close Alert
Close

The Infinite Deaths of Social Media
 * Backchannel
 * Business
 * Culture
 * Gear
 * Ideas
 * Science
 * Security

Story Saved

To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.

Close Alert
Close
Sign In

SUBSCRIBE


GET WIRED + A FREE TOTE

SUBSCRIBE
Search
Search
 * Backchannel
 * Business
 * Culture
 * Gear
 * Ideas
 * Science
 * Security

 * Podcasts
 * Video
 * Artificial Intelligence
 * Climate
 * Games
 * Newsletters
 * Magazine
 * Events
 * Wired Insider
 * Coupons




Jason Parham

Culture
May 4, 2022 2:53 PM


THE INFINITE DEATHS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

The social internet thrives on rebirth. If Elon Musk’s rule leads to Twitter’s
demise, it makes room for something new.
 * Facebook
 * Twitter
 * Email
 * Save Story

   To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.

Photograph: Daniel Grizelj/Getty Images

 * Facebook
 * Twitter
 * Email
 * Save Story

   To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.



In 2012, when a species of Karner blue butterfly in the Indiana Dunes National
Lakeshore park suddenly perished during a summer of intensifying climate
catastrophe, Gregor W. Schuurman, who at the time was working as a conservation
biologist, had an epiphany. His refusal to accept the planet’s changing patterns
was beginning to feel misguided. It prompted Schuurman to join the National Park
Service’s newly created adaptation team as an ecologist, where, among a host of
other duties, he was tasked with finding out-of-the-box solutions—or,
alternative futures, as I prefer to think of them—in the face of an unrelenting
climate reality: that all things, at some point, come to an end.

A major objective of the adaptation team is to discover what possibilities are
viable on the other side of extinction. Schuurman and his colleagues have been
on my mind lately. One of the prevailing narratives to surface from the news of
Elon Musk buying Twitter—in a culture-shaking deal worth $44 billion—was that
the end, in some form, had arrived for the pioneering social media site. The
blue bird was destined for the same fate as the Karner blue butterfly.

Megaphones
Elon Musk Is Right About Twitter

Gilad Edelman

Toxic
Twitter Insiders Fear Elon Musk Heralds a Troll Takeover

Tom Simonite and Vittoria Elliott

The Monitor
Twitter Isn’t a Town Square—It’s a Whole City

Angela Watercutter

It is still too soon to say just how bad, or how much better, Twitter might get
under Musk, but that hasn’t stopped users from all manner of speculation. The
platform that reengineered the immediacy of communication and gave voice to
generation-defining movements—one of the few places where niche online
communities have proven necessary ports of refuge even as harassment
flared—would soon meet its end. 



Hyperbole is instinctual on Twitter. So it was not surprising to hear of an
apocalypse foretold: that the eccentric and polarizing billionaire planned to
transform the site into a troll’s paradise under the guise of free speech (one
with better tools and unencumbered by moderators), creating a domino effect that
would spark a mass exodus of the Twitter faithful. Prognosticators warned of a
migration so impactful that the very site would lose what has made it an
essential resource for untold communities of people.

But endings can also be an animating force. In fact, endings are a primary
context in which the social web should be understood. Fundamentally, the social
internet is a constellation of apps and websites where people openly and
sometimes combatively consort, perform identities, and troll strangers. Within
this online ecosystem, platforms are built, embraced, and abandoned or shut down
with gross regularity; some 70 percent of startups don’t last longer than five
years.



The digital exchange we are the benefactors of today was perfected from loss.
And it continues to be so. Genius ideas are generated from the graveyard of what
was. All modern platforms are created from, on top of, or in relation to
another’s end. The brutality of that fact is also its beauty: Endings are an
inevitable part of the social internet’s lifecycle. And in the wake of what has
gone, of what has been lost or ended, new platforms are built from the parts of
old ones. There is no Facebook without MySpace (and no MySpace without
Friendster). No Spotify without Napster. No Instagram without Tumblr. The life
essence of a platform, in part, is a product of what came before it.

Featured Video



J. Kenji López-Alt Answers Cooking Questions From Twitter



Most Popular
 * Gear
   
   24 Last-Minute Mother’s Day Gifts on Sale Now
   
   Haley Sprankle

 * Backchannel
   
   Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: Inside Shein’s Sudden Rise
   
   Vauhini Vara

 * Gear
   
   The Newest iPad Mini Is at Its Lowest Price Ever
   
   Louryn Strampe

 * Security
   
   Apple Mail Now Blocks Email Tracking. Here’s What That Means
   
   Justin Pot

 * 





One of the many things inherent in the digital age—and especially on social
media, where the tinkering and retooling of relationships is a constant—is the
certainty of impermanence, the assurance of the ephemeral. Things are here and
then, in a spectacular flash, they are not.



None of this should be as surprising as it is. The dominant discourse of the
last decade, accelerated by a collective belief in technology as a necessary and
toothsome cure-all, was centered around endings. And not just conventional ends,
but sudden beheadings (Vine) and fast rises followed by even faster burnouts
(Quibi, WeWork).



The discourse extends well beyond the theater of Silicon Valley. In pop culture,
we regularly speak in the language of apocalypse. Some of the most engrossing
television series of late have attempted to detail the beautiful and complicated
nature of human connection through different end-of-the-world scenarios, as
survivors confront global ruin (Station Eleven; Y: The Last Man). More and more,
our everyday exchanges are decorated in the pageantry of finality: The way we
speak about policing (defund!), climate change (end times!), and education (book
banning!) suggests an emphasis on endings. This week, the leak of the Supreme
Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade sparked a conversation about who has
the right to say when, or if, a pregnancy should be terminated. Endings teach us
where to place value.

Maybe all of that is why I am OK with letting go of Twitter, if and when the
moment comes for that. (If I had to guess, we’re still several years away.) The
expectation that our virtual harbors should last forever is a false one. We
should not expect them to, nor should we want them to. For all its scale and
greedy maneuvering to dominate the social sphere—to be the everything of one’s
online existence—even Facebook has failed to capture the awe and magic of
Twitter’s real-time exchange. It is a cultural force, a hundred times over. The
wealth of insight embedded in its various off-shoot communities—Black Twitter,
NBA Twitter, Relationship Twitter, Freak Twitter, etc.—is impossible to quantify
because what they provide is indispensable in the here and now. But they cannot
last forever as they are.

What Twitter is today is not necessarily the best or most useful version of what
is possible for users moving forward. The more fascinating outcome of Musk’s
acquisition, and a potential exodus of users, is how it might give rise to the
next iteration of the social internet somewhere else (and no I don’t mean the
metaverse, which is intended to be lived in as a domestic space). The inevitably
of Twitter’s end should not be cause for despair—there is excitement in what
awaits us on the other side, in what comes next. That, for me, has always been
the addictive charm of the social internet: that we continually find new ways to
interact, create, be. That no matter what, we never stagnate.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More Great WIRED Stories
 * 📩 The latest on tech, science, and more: Get our newsletters!
 * The takedown of the web’s biggest child abuse site
 * Get ready for a decade of uranus jokes
 * How to use BeReal, the “unfiltered” social media app
 * Should all video games be replayable?
 * The fake agents case baffling US intelligence experts
 * 👁️ Explore AI like never before with our new database
 * 📱 Torn between the latest phones? Never fear—check out our iPhone buying
   guide and favorite Android phones




Jason Parham is a senior writer at WIRED covering pop culture. Before joining
the publication in 2017, he was an editor at The Fader and Gawker. Originally
from Los Angeles, Parham is the founder of Spook, a literary journal for
emerging voices.
Senior Writer
 * Twitter

TopicstwitterElon MuskDigital culture




ONE YEAR FOR $29.99 $10

Get WIRED

SUBSCRIBE
WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. It is the essential source of information
and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. The WIRED
conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our
lives—from culture to business, science to design. The breakthroughs and
innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and
new industries.
 * Facebook
 * Twitter
 * Pinterest
 * YouTube
 * Instagram
 * Tiktok

More From WIRED

 * Subscribe
 * Newsletters
 * FAQ
 * Wired Staff
 * Press Center
 * Coupons
 * Editorial Standards

Contact

 * Advertise
 * Contact Us
 * Customer Care
 * Jobs

 * RSS
 * Site Map
 * Accessibility Help
 * Condé Nast Store
 * Condé Nast Spotlight
 * Manage Preferences

© 2022 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance
of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your
California Privacy Rights. Wired may earn a portion of sales from products that
are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with
retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed,
transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission
of Condé Nast. Ad Choices










WE CARE ABOUT YOUR PRIVACY

We and our partners store and/or access information on a device, such as unique
IDs in cookies to process personal data. You may accept or manage your choices
by clicking below or at any time in the privacy policy page. These choices will
be signaled to our partners and will not affect browsing data.


WE AND OUR PARTNERS PROCESS DATA TO PROVIDE:

Use precise geolocation data. Actively scan device characteristics for
identification. Store and/or access information on a device. Personalised ads
and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product
development. List of Partners (vendors)

I Accept
Show Purposes