The only thing Elon Musk had to do to make Twitter a more enjoyable experience was to stop the platform from putting its thumb on the scale and playing Hall Monitor.
He didn’t need to change the name.
He didn’t need to reward the shittiest engagement whores on the planet by paying them for their garbage takes.
And, for heaven’s sake, he didn’t need to add a sidebar loaded with clickbait headlines that were written by a half-wit, illiterate clown whose vocabulary consists of one verb: “Spark.”
This is just a sample from the past week:
Occasionally, Mr. or Ms. Headline Writer shakes things up a bit by replacing “sparks” with “ignites,” which proves that, at the very least, he or she owns a thesaurus.
Clickbait headlines are a pet peeve of mine. I hate them with the fire of a thousand suns.
There was a Twitter hashtag game about eight years ago called #ClickBaitPoems.
My entry was:
There once was a man from Nantucket and what he does with that bucket will blow your mind!
I was so proud of that, mostly because Ben Shapiro retweeted it.
Though, if it appeared in Twitter’s sidebar today, it would have to be:
“Nantucket man’s bucket sparks heated online debate.”
Clickbait headlines assume that the internet is populated solely by slackjawed imbeciles who, upon seeing the headline, like Pavlov’s dogs, are compelled to click the link with salivating eagerness.
Then again, since internet headline writers keep using clickbait headlines, there must exist a sufficient number of Pavlovian drones out there click-click-clicking away.
I have never once succumbed to the urge.
The fact that Musk has created a Clickbait Hub on Twitter irritates me to no end.
Did he wake up one morning and say to himself, “You know what’s missing on my social media platform? CLICKBAIT! There just isn’t enough clickbait on the internet.”
Were Twitter users clamoring for more clickbait?
“Give us an edit button, Elon!”
“Sorry. No can do. But here’s some clickbait headlines in the sidebar.”
“Would you stop financially rewarding half-wit antisemites for their monstrously bad takes?”
“No, but I will give you clickbait headlines in the sidebar that promote the monstrously bad takes from half-wit antisemites.”
I’ve changed my mind.
Don’t hire a new headline writer, Elon. Get rid of the sidebar entirely and just go back to the trending hashtags sidebar that everyone ignored.
Musk’s boneheaded obsession with fixing what wasn’t broken on Twitter will never make sense to me.
Or perhaps I should say, “Musk’s boneheaded obsession with fixing what wasn’t broken on Twitter sparks debate.”