You would never guess from my posts, but I spend too much time on Twitter. It's bad for my mental health, but impossible to live without for my job. 

There is a reason for both of these facts: the world is insane, and if you want to know how insane no place is better than Twitter to see that. 

My wife will often text me some article to tip me off to something. I refrain from telling her, but I saw it hours before she did. If it happened, someone on Twitter posted about it. 

It’s 2024. Elon Musk Rules X. And the Political World Is Still Addicted.

On Twitter's continued influence, with @EvanMcS https://t.co/r1PTnHzII5

— Alex Roarty (@Alex_Roarty) June 7, 2024

That was true when Twitter fist hit the scene, and became less so during the Trump administration, especially once COVID hit. 

The left always dominated the discourse on Twitter because the left owns the creative class, and Twitter is where the creative class discusses things. But there was a vibrant discussion that included conservatives as well, at least until the "misinformation" mavens started shutting it down. 

Liberals loved that. Twitter became a leftist mutual masturbation society; so much so that every leftist was metaphorically Tubining. 

So when Elon Musk bought Twitter--mostly because the jerks censored The Babylon Bee, which he liked a lot--the left went insane. Alternatives to Twitter popped up everywhere, and as with moving to Canada if Trump won, the left crowed about moving to Mastadon or Threads. 

Yeah, well, the threat of moving away from Twitter was as real as moving to Canada. It was a nice virtue signal, but the US is better than Canada, and nothing beats Twitter or "X" for keeping up with the news cycle and the daily spin. 

 Political elite circles are on Twitter once again, only in a weirder fashion than before Elon Musk took over at the end of 2022. The argument is over; the hellsite is back. It’s a win for Musk, but one that people absolutely do not want to hand to him. In interviews, users said Twitter is not what it was, but also it’s not as bad as it was in the most chaotic days after it became Musk’s to do with as he pleases. People do not like to be on it, but they also once again have to be. Two years after words like Mastodon, BlueSky, Post and Threads became rallying cries and users declared war on the blue check, those who made Twitter what it was in the days before Musk have returned to using X.

“It’s a little bit like — with different stakes, of course — a little bit like the Trump administration,” Hogan said. “He won in 2016; it was horrible. We said we were going to move to New Zealand or Canada, but the reality is we had to ride it out. That is a little similar to this platform.”

Musk has notoriously trashed the media on X and drove industry stalwarts like NPR away with policies they said undermined their credibility. NPR is still gone, but others are now paying up for access to what remains one of the most powerful audiences in social media. NOTUS pays for a gold check that promises “better reach” for content, among other benefits. A number of for-profit news outlets have bought similar access.

Multiple D.C. tweeters said they knew people — everyone says they know one, no one will admit they are one — who paid for the site but chose a setting that keeps the blue check hidden so no one would know. When that setting was threatened, many of these people panicked.

Leftists still trash Twitter and Elon, and left-leaning nonprofits are still trying (and succeeding, often) to scare big advertisers off the platform because they HATE HATE HATE Elon Musk, but the reality is that if you are interested in politics there is nothing like it. 

If you need to follow the news, Twitter is where to be. If you need to see alternative news, Twitter is where you must go. (And, of course, Hot Air, where brilliant writers like me are here to keep you informed!). If you need to see interesting medical research, no place is better. 

The cream rises to the top. As does the trash. 

Twitter is, as it always was, the place where everything goes, including the trash. There is, in fact, plenty of mis- and dis-information, but to be honest nobody exceeds the MSM for spreading disinformation, so that is hardly a knock on the site. At least you can find the rebuttals to the trash as well. 

Try that in The Washington Post, where you only get one side of the story, and a very distorted one at that. 

I often joke that Twitter is a cesspool through which you wade to find the diamonds scattered around the bottom. Or, perhaps, you could call it panning for gold in a polluted river. It can be yucky, but the finds can make you rich as well, informationally speaking. 

I watched the launch of Starship yesterday on Twitter--actually on the site--and saw high definition video beamed from space as Starship reentered the atmosphere and landed in the ocean. Amazing!

My father-in-law listens to podcasts on Twitter. I get my story ideas from Twitter. 

Most importantly, I get my Sunday Smiles memes from Twitter, pleasing many of you. 

The left still resents the fact that they don't own it, and hence they don't own the information space anymore. But they have to slum with the rest of us now if they want to be relevant moment by moment. 

“I still use it, and I still communicate via Twitter,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. “But it’s just a much less user-friendly platform than it was when I started when I started using it.”

“It’s [a] tool that I don’t enjoy,” Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, whose missives on the site have routinely made news this year, told NOTUS. “So it’s just the way things are gonna continue.”

The senator added that he doesn’t spend much time on X and wouldn’t recommend anyone else do so either. The vibe is simply resignation.

“I would like to pause and take a minute here and say there is a squandered opportunity here on the part of Threads,” said Molly Jong-Fast, prolific poster and pundit. Like just about everyone NOTUS spoke to, she tried the other sites and was most excited by Threads when it debuted. But the site never worked enough like Twitter to replace it, and Meta doesn’t seem very interested in politics.

X, what’s left of it, is what there is, Jong-Fast said.

“A lot of people are gone, and people don’t use it as much. You do feel like you are producing content for someone who may or may not be a supporter of American democracy,” she said.

“I don’t think you get shamed as much for staying on there anymore,” she added. “Why give it to the right? We built it. Why can’t we stay?”

It's ironic, since their reach is as large or larger than before. But they must share the site with the hoi polloi, and that annoys them no end. 

Twitter is the last bastion of (mostly) free speech. Now, even your Adobe apps monitor what you say and do, ready to stop you from exceeding the bounds of what they consider ethical. 

But there is still Twitter. It's not perfect, but it is the most important app in politics.