Twitter Scorecard (12/17/22)

Hits and Misses

Back in mid-October, when the news hit that Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase would go through, I posted a pair of articles about it. The first was an assessment of the man himself. At the end of it, I proposed a theoretical character named “Elon Musket” who — either intrinsically or via some eleventh hour Pauline conversion — had decided to play for Team Humanity.

Schrödinger's Musk

In the follow-up piece, I further proposed a set of potential domino effects triggered by the sale, with only minimal additional (and fully legal) inputs required from Elon himself. I nicknamed these predictions “the Xanatos Prophecies,” with the core theory being that “Musket” had purchased Twitter in order to destroy it from within (a noble and necessary goal, in my opinion).

Murder by Acquisition

Almost exactly two months have passed since I made these predictions. So how am I doing so far?

The short answer is “pretty good,” although I missed at least one very big development, and some of the smaller ones are moving far more slowly than I expected as a consequence.

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The Misses

1. The Twitter Files

This was the biggest miss on my part, of course. As everyone and their cat knows by now, a couple of weeks ago Elon opened up the company’s various emails, slacks and internal documents to a select group of independent journalists (namely two rather famous ones who host their news operations right here on Substack). Supposedly the only limitation imposed was that they must publish their findings on Twitter first (a billionaire’s gotta eat, after all).

I see no need to comment on the results of the investigations themselves, which appear to be ongoing. Needless to say, they have so far been “shocking” in that they’ve proven what most of us “conspiracy theorists” already strongly suspected was going on.

Not only did I whiff on this public airing of dirty laundry as an early gambit, but I failed to see how such a move could help to accelerate Twitter’s destruction in the arena of 5th Generational Warfare. As the ugly tale of the government’s covert puppetry of Twitter unfolds, our enemies on Team Machine have been prodded to action on multiple fronts. The recent doxxing of the location of Elon’s son X (and subsequent attack by 4th Gen combatants on the vehicle carrying him) marks a major escalation on their part. I think “Handwaving Freakoutery” nails the blend of 4GW and 5GW tactics at play here in this recent piece:

Dilemma Actions in Fifth Generation Warfare

It’s worth noting that I think Team Machine won a small victory during this most recent exchange, in what has otherwise been a one-sided slaughter against them on the Musk’s new Twitter battlefield. More on that later.

2. Child Pornography Crackdown.

The apparent crackdown on child pornography wasn’t something I considered, mostly because I wasn’t aware of just how massive a problem it was (which is in itself an indictment of the legacy news outlets). I also don’t see how such an action, though noble and commendable, could help destroy Twitter from within. However, this is big win for Team Humanity, no matter how you slice it. In a pair of crisp tweets, crusading Anti-CP Activist Eliza Bleu sums up the old regime’s “failures” (or, perhaps more darkly, its “strategies”) and the brighter path the new one seems to be forging.

Eliza @elizableu

Reminder: a 13 year old minor survivor begged Twitter to remove a video sexually exploiting him. Twitter reviewed the content and said NO. They had his government ID showing that he was a minor at the time. The video had over 160k views. Over 2k retweets.

Eliza @elizableu

To those who aren’t aware yet, last week Twitter did add a direct reporting option for child sexual exploitation. (ONLY on tweets with content images/videos) this was not previously available and was a separate form that wasn’t easy to find. I’m grateful to see these changes.

Team Machine, of course, had its prerendered concern-trolling response locked and loaded. As usual, it’s a rather poorly disguised rearguard action to defend the odious partisans of the bluebird’s too-Orwellian-for-Orwell “Trust & Safety Council.” I expect much more will come to light with regards to the Twitter CP angle, during Musk’s public exhumation of what he has since called a “crime scene” of a company.

3. The Bot-pocalypse Delayed?

While I’m still holding out hope, I have yet to see major movement on this front. Of course, all the oxygen has been stolen by the Twitter Files, for now. My working theory is that the big bot cleanse will take the backseat until this journalistic project is complete. Musket would want to make it seem like as many eyeballs as possible were glued to these revelations as they rolled out of the gates, including the untold scads of robotic ones out there.

In terms of strict 5GW tactics, a major drain in active account numbers during the production of this exposé would send the wrong message to both our allies and our enemies. In the latter’s case, we want them as frightened as possible so they’ll busy themselves with playing CYA games and botching easy layups. It also prevents handing them some kind of alternate narrative to exploit (e.g. “Twitter in Chaos as Musk Deletes Millions of User Accounts”). Instead, their best move will simply be to sit out the Twitter Files Show and pretend it ain’t happening, which makes them look all the more suspicious and corrupt.

I probably missed some other minor developments as well. Pobody’s nerfect, after all. But now let’s get into some of the stuff I think I got more or less right.

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The Hits

1. Mass “Blue Check” Sepukku / Woke Attrition

While I admit I didn’t need to be Nostradamus to call this one, it has so far transpired at the rate and radius I expected (and has been quite deliciously entertaining to watch, I might add).

By setting himself up perfectly as the next Big Bad squatting rent-free in their heads (sorry Donald), a cascade of melodramatic exits was almost guaranteed. And while I didn’t call out Mastodon by name as their new refuge, it indeed seems like just the place to warehouse these narcissistic, crybully scoundrels. Ironically (and here I’ll make a fresh prediction), I believe Mastodon itself will swiftly turn into a bloodbath and/or a ghost town, due to this sudden injection of Woke royalty. These people thrive on scorn, misery and conflict, and will turn on each other soon enough if no “Nazis” are around to cancel. As Celia Farber put it recently, they are “perfectly and obscenely unfair.”

FBI/Twitter Stasiland Files Not A Story, But Temporary Ban Of Musk Doxxers Leads To International Crisis In Journalism

Also notable is that the same press outlets that cheered on the suppression of the New York Post’s (factually accurate) Hunter Biden laptop story have now enlisted the United Nations and other NGOs to help forge a new narrative, this time about the banning of a few idiots who doxxed a man’s 2 year-old child. Don’t get me wrong; I think Musk fell into an emotionally volatile trap here, and in doing so handed Team Machine a minor victory. Even he himself seems to have realized this, as he’s already reinstated the offenders.

But again, these organizations are “perfectly and obscenely unfair,” and therefore unwilling to let go of this anti-journalist narrative so easily. The result is that as of publication time, several large, legacy blue-check corporate news outlets have intimated they might “reevaluate” their continued presence on Twitter, given its new stridently anti-First Amendment stance. As usual, I don’t know whether to scream, laugh or cry about their dissonant hypocrisy. I’m thinking of inventing a new kind of whistle to address this bullshit, like a melancholy version of a catcall.

Anyway, if any of them actually follow through on these threats, the snowball effect could be huge. Not because they have massive audiences (they don’t), but because it would provide additional cultural and rhetorical cover for those zombies chanting “Twitter is NaziDisinfoLand,” and for their governments to “take swift, decisive” action in repsonse.

Meanwhile, the preening gasbags of the entertainment industry are already sharpening their katanas. While far from complete, here are two partial lists of the celebrity exits we’ve seen thus far. Also note that this part of the prediction was predicated on Elon’s general amnesty of those banned or jailed by the old guard — something he has hinted at but has yet to execute on a massive scale. If and when those jail doors swing open, expect the daily celeb-sepukku counts to hit Jonestown levels. In that sense, I think the fact that we’ve seen this many departures so far even without a general amnesty is an indicator of just how massive the exodus will be, if and when that occurs.

The same goes for my prediction about a more gradual form of “woke attrition,” which was always based on a longer trend curve running parallel to the reinstatements of banned users. Like the Bot-pocalyse, I believe such a largescale amnesty has been put on hold until the Twitter Files project is complete. Not only that, but it will be difficult for any of us to separate signal from noise until then, as both Team Humanity and Team Machine will be engaged in desperate dogfights over its meaning throughout.

2. Government Demolition

In my opinion, one of the more interesting characters to emerge from the Files thus far was Democrat Ro Khanna. Bari Weiss covers some of that territory in her interview piece here, but the short story is that the congressman who represents Silicon Alley seems to have been the only government figure to have expressed concern about the company running roughshod over the First Amendment. He’s also been a vocal proponent about breaking up major players within the tech sector (which is odd given his district’s own priorities, and perhaps even suspiciously so).

Regardless of my own thoughts about breaking up tech companies, I predict this will be the next dagger in the heart of the Twitter monster. While the Biden administration has thus far been playing dumb, the latest tranche of evidence regarding the FBI’s direct and frequent commands to ban accounts is going to require some titanic shift in the narrative if they want to keep the whole “disinfo” grift going.

I believe we will soon see a full court press for social media trustbusting, with Ro Khanna serving as its public face — and Trojan horse, given the ulterior motives and perverse incentives involved. I think Bari plays right into the enemy’s hands with her hagiography of Khanna, even floating him an unearned, “So when are you running for president?” softball at the end (Don’t get me wrong; I think Weiss’ TFP often contains some excellent independent reporting, particularly with regards to the “transgender movement” and its attendant pathologies. But she’s being entirely too credulous in her hero-hunting here).

Predictions on other USG fronts have been bearing out, if somewhat quietly. Despite revelations about her secret shitfuckery, ex-Trust & Safety honcho and anthropomorphic snake Vijaya Gadde slithers onwards, in her appointed role within the Biden administration’s Cybersecurity Advisory Committee. Apparently, DHS regards her as some kind of an expert on the “spread of false and misleading information.” And who am I to argue with such an august body?

Gadde will likely be interrogated by the Republican-led congress early next year. If the Democratic party’s palace guards bother to cover these hearings at all, expect the standard (and at this point, just fucking boring) accusations of racism and sexism to abound. Also expect that, rather than grind her under the bus tires like so much Weiner, she’ll instead be gifted an even more official position within a new federalized Department of Disinformation (or whatever Orwellian moniker it eventually adopts).

As for how such bureaucratic oversight will be sold, google the phrase “Government regulation of Twitter,” then click the News tab for a taste of the narrative feast to come. Tastes like chicken — or Chicken Little, at least. Their language is becoming more openly militant, too, deploying terms like “weaponization” as if they cribbed it straight from my original “Murder” piece. That’s because they sense the incredible danger of this moment, as do their handlers sources within the Swamp Deep State national security agencies.

In any case, this prediction’s still in the cooker, but I think we’ve already heard some rumblings of what’s likely to come. Look for major developments on the “Uncle Sam Bludgeons Twitter to Death” front in early 2023.

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Current Grade:

C+

I’m going to give myself a slightly better than average score at this stage in the game. This is mostly due to the fact that some of the predictions I think I nailed are moving along at an even faster clip than I imagined. It’s also because the ones that haven’t seen much movement yet are being (in my opinion) temporarily stalled by my major whiff on the Twitter Files.

I’m open to alternative grades in the comments, of course. And I’ll be reevaluating myself (and making new predictions) on a semi-regular basis in the weeks and months ahead.

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