The Engagement Whores of X
Elon Musk is rewarding the dumbest, most attention-starved gobshites on his platform
X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, recently began offering ad revenue sharing for participating high-engagement accounts.
The idea sounds good in theory, providing X users with a way to monetize their posts on the platform. In reality, however, it's been an unmitigated disaster for those of us who have to put up with their flailing "LOOK AT ME!!" attempts to boost engagement and increase their share of the ad revenue.
It turns out that people will say anything for money.
It used to be the case that when someone would make some galactically stupid comment on Twitter, other users would quote-tweet them to insult or criticize the mind-numbingly dumb take. Other users would then swarm the replies, leading to what is known as a “ratio” in which the replies far outnumber the retweets and “likes.”
Nobody wanted to get ratioed on the old Twitter. It was the social media equivalent of walking around with toilet paper stuck to your shoe.
But now, with Musk's new scheme, a ratio is a good thing since it means boosted engagement and more money for the moron whose dumb take people are mocking.
At first, I only blocked the dopes who boasted about how much money they earned from the revenue-sharing scheme.
But then, the participants started seeing how much money they can make by being as outlandish and moronic as possible. Now, they go out of their way to peddle the stupidest, most mind-numbingly idiotic things they can think of just to send their engagement through the roof to get more cash.
Many people I follow are still quote-tweeting these engagement whores to make fun of them. They still haven’t figured out that doing so gives them precisely what they want.
Now is the time to employ that age-old advice your mum gave you as a child: Just ignore them and they’ll go away.
Until all the people I follow finally stop quote-tweeting these dipshits, I decided to block every arm-flailing "Look at ME" account I could find.
So this weekend, I launched "Operation Starve The Jackasses." I switched to the "For You" feature on the home page, which I usually avoid like the plague, to see how many of those revenue-sharing engagement whores get pride of place there.
Boy, howdy. It was as if I stumbled on Crap Takes Central.
My "Operation Starve The Jackasses" is a completely bipartisan effort. I blocked everyone, from the insufferable cranks of the anti-Trump ResistanceLOL to the belligerent, clownish Only Trump "influencers."
The Krassenstein brothers, Jack "Use Promo Code" Posobiec, Tim Pool, Laura Loomer, Benny Johnson – I blocked them all. And let me tell you, it felt good.
Sure, they neither know nor care that Dianny blocked their accounts. I'm not one of those sanctimonious prats who jumps into the replies to announce that I'm blocking someone. Instead, I just quietly went about my mission, and with each new block, I could feel the crushing weight of their stupidity being lifted from my shoulders.
Employing the block function on these guys is like opening the windows to air out a room after someone farts.
There's also the added benefit of chiseling away at their "Jackass-for-Profit" scheme.
For all of his boasts about making Twitter, now X, a better platform, Elon Musk really crapped the sheets with his revenue-sharing scheme. He's rewarding the dumbest, most attention-starved gobshites while throttling engagement for everyone else.
So long as there is money to be made, the Engagement Whores of X won't stop posting idiotic bilge.
They want to piss you off.
They want you to mock them in a quote-tweet.
They want to get ratioed.
Because under Musk's lame-brained scheme, a ratio translates into cold, hard cash.
And all the dopes who are quote-tweeting these clowns believing that they're "owning" them are, in reality, the ones who are getting owned.
Some people I follow on X have wised up and, rather than quote-tweeting the money-grubbing idiots, are posting screen captures of their tweets instead.
I prefer blocking them entirely because it deprives these nitwits of attention while preventing their stupidity from invading my timeline.
Most of these guys were irritating and exhausting before Elon Musk started financially incentivizing their idiocy. And now that he has, their posts make his platform about as pleasant as a wet fart in a crowded elevator.
I use X to get news and information. Plus, I only follow people who are either insightful or funny … or, in many cases, both.
I have zero interest in helping a bunch of over-eager, money-grubbing dipshits profit from being the biggest, loudest idiots on social media.