thoughts on change

 So the big news elsewhere online is that a very rich, rather foolish, and unfairly lionized man has bought a major online platform, and is running it rapidly into the ground (or so it appears - I honestly thought the meltdown would be slower but now I've decided to simply schedule a post there for 11:59 pm every night of a violinist playing "Nearer, My God, To Thee"* like the legend on the Titanic)

(*Yes I know it probably wasn't that song, if it was a song at all, and even if it was, it probably wasn't the tune most North Americans know. I did joke that "Five minutes before Twitter ends, a woman will post a video of "Nearer My God To Thee" and four minutes before Twitter ends her timeline will be deluged with reply-guys arguing that she's wrong, that wouldn't have been the version played, or that it wasn't Nearer My God To Thee but rather Songe D'Automne or that there is no good evidence that a song was played AT ALL)

And yes, some people are rejoicing at this. But also, I see a tone change over there today - people always joked and called it the "hellsite," now people are becoming surprisingly tender and noting that "yeah, I made a lot of friends here, and had a lot of fun" and YES, I have been screaming that since That Dude talked about buying it, I would miss it when it left. It's how I stayed in touch with a few people. It was my source of conversation during the pandemic. It kept me from being desperately lonely because I am NOT the kind of person who feels comfortable calling someone out of the blue ("what if I'm bothering them, what if they don't want to talk to me? Will they be honest or will they brush me off or will they be rude about it and hurt my feelings" ) but with Twitter, I can just post stuff, and people can reply if they want to. 

And I would miss that, that sort of.....low-commitment for the other person communication, where I don't feel like I'm OBLIGATING anyone to pay attention to me, but that I still might get a little attention if I say something they find heartfelt or clever. 

And I decided I needed a replacement, just in case, oh, way back in April when That Dude first seemed like he was really gonna buy the place. So I made a mastodon account. Mastodon is very different from Twitter; they try very hard to keep hostility down on the site and I understand different servers/instances (I'm still unsure about the lingo) differ in how tightly they're modded, but the basic idea is they want to keep abusive language off the site. (There are no "quote tweets" for example, so people can't dunk on another person; they have to engage them).

it's....okay I guess. Not the same. And most of my Twitter mutuals seem not to be over there, or aren't there yet. Some are, and that's nice. And I found a few more people to follow over there (I am at @acerbicotter@mstdn.social - Acerbic Otter is an anagram of my real name and I thought it was kind of a cool username without being right up front that "this is ME")

But the larger thing is my annoyance that one person can take a thing a lot of people loved (or even more: was part of their business; some artists get commissions through Twitter) and just wreck it because (a) he decided he didn't want it after all but (b) he basically signed the paperwork. 

It frustrates me because the rich, they really aren't like you and me. For example: this systematics botany course. I'm terrified of it. I have to do it though, and I have to do the best job I possibly can on it. Because I can't not, both for reasons of not getting bad post-tenure reviews and maybe having my tenure challenged, but also, because I have to think of the students taking it. 

I also think of an F. Scott Fitzgerald quotation:

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” 

And yes. That's true. True of so many people. You could also sub in "power" for "wealth" - we've had numerous instances here of petty county or city politicians in my state just.....embezzling....for their own good pleasure, apparently. And our roads continue to decay, and schools struggle, and people wonder where their tax money is going, exactly....

One thing I've really realized these past few years is there really is a double standard, one that applies to the wealthy and powerful, and another one for the rest of us. (And while I *am* wealthy by global standards, I very much am not in comparison to the people who have free rein, apparently, to smash things up. Not that I would do that if I had money - I'd probably try to fix things instead)
But it does make me sad, the idea that some people can just....do those things, and then retreat back into the warm cocoon of their yes-men (there are big fans of the new owner at Twitter, and they're quite loud) and leave others to deal with the fallout. And it's discouraging, just another discouragement on the large pile of discouragements I've seen in the past few years.