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Back in June, I deactivated my X (formerly Twitter) account.
At the time this felt like a meaningless gesture. I often deactivated when I needed a break from the maddening masses. But I was always conscious about needing to reactivate within 30 days so as not to lose my account altogether; so conscious that I would mark my calendar “Turn Twitter Back On” about three weeks out, fearful I would forget and lose my (yes, measly) 7,000-ish followers and my public voice.
But come July, I let my “Turn Twitter Back On” warning pass with an obvious realization: Quitting X felt a lot like when I quit drinking. Deleting my account was surprisingly difficult. Our addictions to our phones and social media are real.
As someone who writes about local, state and national politics, could I cut the cord? Could I know everything I needed to know without the immediacy of X? I was about to find out.
Last weekend, billionaire X owner Elon Musk appeared onstage at a Donald Trump rally. Musk touted the importance of free speech, adding, “this will be the last election” if Trump doesn’t win. Wearing a cap with the “Make America Great Again” slogan of Trump’s campaign, Musk appeared to acknowledge the foreboding nature of his remarks. “As you can see I am not just MAGA — I am Dark MAGA,” he said. It was the first time that Musk joined one of Trump’s rallies and was evidence of their growing alliance in the final stretch of the presidential election.”
Here in Kentucky, our GOP legislators often complain on their social media about the media, accusing news organizations and journalists of bias. Yet they do not seem to mind that the owner of one of the biggest media companies on the planet is openly campaigning for Trump.
I wonder why.
When Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, was being considered as VP Kamala Harris’s running mate, Republican electeds and their spokespeople poked fun at him, repeatedly saying he’d been born with a silver spoon. But these same legislators seem to have no issue with Trump’s golden spoon and are proudly supporting him.
Funny how that works.
Ask many of the Trump voters here in rural Kentucky and they will tell you right off that all of us in the media — except Musk, I guess — no matter how local or nationally recognized, are liars; are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome; are infanticide enablers, gun grabbers, school sex groomers, open border advocates, God haters, suppressors of free speech. The “enemy of the people” Trump has railed against since 2015.
Meanwhile, Musk’s purchase of X, with his creeping control of who and what gets amplified or suppressed on X — one of the biggest media companies in the world — has been the proverbial icing on Trump’s cake.
It is telling that Trump did not even need to come back to X and claim his old megaphone because the political journalists he regularly calls “enemy of the people” (and worse) post screenshots of his all-caps, hateful, Truth Social lies and rants on their own X accounts like an army of free press secretaries.
Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who famously left Twitter before it became X, is back in the news with his latest book “The Message.” Coates had about a million followers when he disappeared from the platform. In an interview prior to his departure he was asked if he ever thought about leaving Twitter. His reply: I wake up every day hoping for the courage to leave.
I quit X because I, too, had long been awaiting the courage to leave.
How many of us have become addicted to scrolling, to news alerts, to watching the endless supply of two-minute videos, overwhelmed by the scope of bad news? And then there is the building of a platform, especially if you are a young person in the news business. Can you build a career — especially if you are in a smaller state like Kentucky — if you are not on X with a brand and a following?
I knew I was finished with X when I started overthinking and censoring my own posts. There is no greater death knell for a writer than censorship. The same goes for democracy. And don’t we keep saying we are worried about democracy?
X is no longer a democratic space. That train done left the station long ago.
X is not Twitter, the platform of old where we found extended community and camaraderie.
X — for all of Musk’s pledges of his love of free speech — is a killer of free expression, political heroin curated by a billionaire controlling our discourse and stumping at presidential campaign rallies for another billionaire, the man who branded journalists as the enemy of the people.
X is the symbol with which one signs their name when they cannot read nor write. An ominous sign.
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