X Marks The Spot

I’ve rediscovered X. And I’m not, at the moment, sure how I feel about that.

So, I’ve avoided the thing for- I don’t even know for how long. A good while, since not long after Elon Musk purchased it as Twitter and rebranded it. In those days, many seemed be jumping ship from it for other platforms, displeased with the changes its new regime brought to it. My take, then, was that it had become clumsy and was losing relevance and I needed to get lost and share my head elsewhere. It was a shame. Twitter had become legendary and was the “go-to” for most of us looking for a microblogging solution. Third parties began to withdraw their support of it. The new X didn’t plug into the world as easily as Twitter had, as necessarily for many of us. But I didn’t chose to walk away – it, instead, cast me aside. When, upon trying to logon, one day, I found that someone had commandeered my account, changing its password, locking me out of my own shit. I tried for a long time to get the masters behind the inner workings, there, to help me regain control, but was consistently refused. I couldn’t even delete my account, there. Finally, I simply abandoned it. I’d already started using Threads as I’d once done Twitter, but- Even now, Threads is not the old Twitter. I’d leapt all in on Threads at first, but the initial sheen of it wore off quickly and I found myself using it more and more sporadically. Really, I barely touch it. The folks and the brands I’d followed on Twitter weren’t all there and have yet to migrate to it. Professionals of every stripe continued to use X and still do and- Recently, I said “fuck it” and started a new account there. I’ve not been able to put it down, since.

Again, I’m uncertain how I feel about that.

I’m a political junkie. I also lean leftward. I’ve been doing little but fighting with self-avowed MAGAs about everything under the sun, current events-wise, for days. Days and nights. Exhaustion’s set it, my eyeballs are aflame. My ass hurts from this stool, as does my neck from gawking into the monitors on my desk, hour-upon-hour. I’d recently had surgery on both hands and arms for cubital/carpal tunnel relief; the procedures went splendidly and I’ve been healing quickly and well, but imprisoning these claws on my keyboard for so long at a time, daily, is wearing my wrists down. Full recovery is expected to take six months. I have a few more of those months of this typing-related pain to look forward to.

“You know I’m worth it,” X coos.

It may be right. To a degree.

It’s been a gaddamned thrill, rebuilding my presence on X. So much information to take in, some of it even factual. So much interaction – some of it actually rewarding. But, most-importantly, I’ve rediscovered an outlet for all the crap on my mind, one that isn’t altogether so different from that on which it’s based. There’s a lot of the old Twitter remaining. Its usefulness, its mechanics. Contact-wise, it’s still the best representation of what I both agree with and not, out in our world. Having said that, I’ve been putting in a lot of hours, there, arguing with MAGAs over this, over that. Much of the arguing is one-sided, consisting of me commenting on one of their posts but without response. Other times, I stumble upon someone who seems rather unhinged and unable to grasp reality. It’s one thing to have a differing opinion than someone. Or, even, a disagreement as to what is factual or not. But to be floating off upon some completely alternate tangential plane from me, that’s a tough one to debate through. And many of these folks aren’t exactly well-versed in the art. Indeed, one guy who got into it with me, last night, seemed to have it planned out in his mind how each step of the exchange would go and when I didn’t play along, he got extremely upset, accused me of being “obsessed” with him, although my role in all of this was as a respondent to this queries and statements unto me. I’d answer or refuse to do so and he kept coming – finally deciding to leave one last put-down in meme form before blocking me. It’s those interactions that suck one’s soul from ‘em. It certainly sucked the shit out of me. But, anyway, I shrugged it off and went on to throw bags of poo at Charlie Kirk.

Charlie has yet to give me the time of day.

“Don’t you think you’ve spent enough time arguing with people on the Internet?” my sister Amy asked, earlier. “You’ve got more important things to do – like dust some of your shelves. Or organize that sad closet.”

True. I let my world fall down around my ankles when I allow the Internet to distract me. It’s “Housekeeping Week”, here on the homestead, and I’m far from being done with it. Knocked out the vacuuming, yesterday, but have yet to make a dent on all this soil that’s accumulated on every surface of my personal space. And that closet? I did get a little bent when it was brought up, but the truth often hurts but not as much as that fucking mess affronts one’s senses. It definitely needs some shoring-up. I’ll finish this second cup of coffee, first, then get busy. “Happy sister” equals “happy mister”.