And just yesterday, Elon Musk filled the news with his latest escalations against Twitter. It looks like it could actually die, even though about 6 percent of humanity got tied to it in ways that mean if it dies their lives will be seriously disrupted.

The sooner they do as you suggest, the better.

Hi Scritic, One of the best aspects was a kind of flattening of the usual hierarchies that used to dominate conversations in anthro and academia overall. Another great aspect was the sheer diversity of sites. Lots of people had their site and then linked to and participated on other sites as well. It’s similar to everyone having their own Twitter account in its heyday, but the ‘home’ site tended to be more built out. It was also nice to have something where you were working with more than 280 characters. Stuff that people wrote was easier to find and keep track of (unlike many of the long ‘threads’ people started writing to get around character limits). I always found twitter to be kind of a mess when it came to actually trying to find things you’d read (even with advance search functions). But things were problematic then just as now. People were terrible on the old internet too. I think platforms like Twitter sort of amplify the problematic dimensions, especially with the shorter content and how things work with likes, sharing, virality, etc. One good aspect of having a blog was that control over comments etc was in your hands, rather than some central admin that may or or may actually do anything to address problematic interactions and comments.

Hi Ariana! Ya I agree there’s some hope here with the death of twitter. I love the idea of a turn to print as well. I love things that ‘work’ even when the internet, power, etc is not working. I’m not sure what will happen with the whole ‘blog revitalization’ idea, but I am looking forward to other spaces and possibilities. I’m also hoping we can avoid the same pattern that happened with twitter the next time around. Thanks for your comment here!