A funeral for @chrismessina 🪦🥀
Welcome to my third digital demise
I’ve died digital deaths before.
The first time I died online was in 2009.
I’d outgrown “factoryjoe”, the pseudonym I’d worn since high school and decided to retire it, revealing my given name to everyone on the internet.
RIP @factoryjoe. Long live @chrismessina!
The second time was a more private affair. In the first month of my walkabout year in 2019, my Lisbon Airbnb was broken into at 4am and my laptop, phone, and wallet were stolen — and I didn’t have backups for my 2FA codes. For sure I’d never be able to sign in to my accounts again — especially Google, my authentication hub. Miraculously I did recover access — but not before I’d resigned myself to complete digital dissolution.
A week ago — on April 14 — I died for the third time.
Yes friends, @chrismessina is dead.
All this over a blue check?
Ha, no.
Man, blue checks.
Where to begin?
Back in 2009, Tony La Russa sued Twitter because someone impersonated him and so Twitter, in its infinite wisdom, decided, “Oh hey, we can solve this by identifying authentic users if they really are who they claim to be!”
Genius.
And thus began the blue check program.
And, like all status signifiers throughout antiquity, as Twitter’s presence grew in the public imagination, so too grew the apparent importance and desirability of obtaining a blue check.
If you were at risk of impersonation, or because you knew someone on the inside (as I must have), then you got one. But if you were some shmuck, then you didn’t. Not that there's anything wrong with shmucks, but they just didn't get blue checks. Apparently. Needless to say, no one wanted to be a shmuck and lots of people had opinions about other shmucks who somehow had finagled themselves blue checks.
This situation had escalated into simmering class warfare by the time Elon took over.
There were the blue-checks and the blue-check-have-nots and people were pissed just to have something to be pissed about.
The defender of truth and decency and smoking marijuana and having mutual oral sex at the same, i.e. Elon Musk, declared he would remedy the corrupt regime. Rather than using blue checks as a way to identify authentic accounts, it would instead indicate which users paid for vanity and validation.
Genius.
Since I was unwilling to pay, my legacy blue check would expire on April 20 — “4/20” — the date Elon would execute the blue check aristocracy.
But my blue check vanished on April 14 and in protest, I committed digital seppuku.
Must @chrismessina die?
I’ll tell you how @chrismessina died.
So I had a few drinks and was feeling liberal, and then I saw that an Elon retweeted an Elon Stan account (i.e. @titterdaily) to his 135M+ followers.
From my perspective, the Elon Stan seemed to have stolen content from a 15 year old app researcher named Nima Owji from Iran. Since Nima had to complained to me about this Elon Stan account appropriating his content before, I complained to my 100K+ followers about this injustice — so smugly self-righteous was I!
But the Elon Stan account shot back — I was wrong! As he explained, Nima had asked him to share the content, and, even though he hadn’t named Nima in the text of his tweet, he was within his rights. And, he implored, I should delete my tweet.
I refused.
My issue was with Elon’s retweet — since Elon didn’t care about the source of the image. He didn’t care whether he stole the content of a 15 year old. He had been fucking up Twitter for six months, which is his right. He bought it; he can break it.
But I was once 15 and had been exploited by an older man, and couldn’t stand by as I saw something similar happen again.
But this interlocutor — the Elon Stan — he didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, he had provided sufficient credit, and if his superior took advantage of young boys, well — he wasn’t responsible!
So, he blocked me.
Must we have beef?
Hours later I was watching BEEF, and Nima DM’d me: “Wait... what happened to your Blue checkmark?”
I checked. It was gone.
“Why?”, you might ask.
I have no idea.
But: consider the circumstance.
Elon Stan @TitterDaily “stole” Nima’s content, and Elon retweeted Titter’s post. I called this out, pissing off @TitterDaily. I then refused to delete me tweet, so he blocked me, and then hours later my blue check vanished.
Coincidence?
Please.
I have no idea why I lost my blue check six days before the rest of the blue check aristocracy, but I did. I have been in relationship with Twitter for 17 years — longer than any of my adult romantic relationships — and then suddenly, I become persona non grata?
Goodbye. 👋🏻
The end of Twitter
I like what
said:This is what I have been waiting for, is for somebody to wake up and say, “I do not want to come to a platform every single day and get punched in the face.”
Twitter was never a great companion or partner, but on the whole it was dynamic, acerbic, and witty.
As a recovering codependent person, I know that I craved its ability to bring me feedback from strangers and friends alike.
I gave Twitter the hashtag — and at best it feigned indifference, as any narcissist would.
For 17 years, Twitter was my daily habit but in the last six months it has grown into a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The Elon Stans will continue to stan. But the core of Twitter is rotten and hollow.
And thus @chrismessina must die — has died.
As one of the earliest progeny of the platform (user #1186 to be precise), having contributed something of significance (e.g. the hashtag, among other ideas) — am now moving on, hurt and grieving. Knowing that no one is left to give a shit (fine, whatever), I am steadfast in my demise.
I condemn those who compromise their integrity to stay, because who do you do it for?
I die, am dead, but no longer complicit.
Tonight I will sleep well, legacy intact.
I loved your story ! Very well written and a sharp analysis of what’s going on.
A moment in internet history.