Threading The Needle

No I’m not joining Threads.

It’s bad enough I’m enmeshed in the Zuckerverse as far as Facebook and Instagram – I don’t need another way for him to steal even more of my information and sell it to whatever right-wing cause he’s decided to support this week. I’ve seen the list of personal data this program demands. My own mother didn’t know half that stuff about me and I’ll be damned if I provide it to a guy who looks like he got a B- in Human Studies on his home planet and is here as an exchange student.

Plus, from what I can figure out, the service is just poorly designed. There’s no way to view anything chronologically – you’re stuck with whatever the Algorithm says you can see, peasant, so stop complaining. There’s no desktop app. You have to sign up for this through Instagram, and if you decide you don’t like it you can’t delete it without deleting your entire Instagram profile – which is, admittedly, not a huge thing since I have made exactly zero posts on my Instagram account, though I would have to painstakingly recreate the odd mix of vintage photography, memes, British Bake Off, friends, family, and musicians that I follow and that would be a nuisance and I have enough nuisances in my life as it is.

I didn’t sign up for Mastodon, BlueSky, Pickwick, Bumbershoot, Lollobrigida, Fermat, CarrotCake, Semaphore, Bullfrog, or whatever other thing was supposed to be the next alternative to Twitter either. They all seemed like too much trouble.

Nor did I ever sign up for Twitter, to be fair. It always struck me as a cesspool, though many of the funny memes I see on Instagram originated on Twitter so there’s that. Watching Elmo disprove in real time the entire idea that the rich are somehow smarter or more capable than the rest of us has had its grim satisfaction but when it finally does implode for good it will leave a gap. A lot of people put a lot of effort into making it a place of value and it is a shame to see it destroyed in the name of simpleminded greed but if there is a better metaphor for the current United States I haven’t seen it.

The fact that Elmo has now sued the Zuckerdroid for copyright infringement? plagiarism? stealing workers? something? because half the people he summarily fired went to the other guy and slapped this thing together in half an hour is just gravy, really.

So I’ll sit on the sidelines and watch two socially awkward right-wing billionaires bash each other over the head in the business arena and hope that their ridiculous posturing about bashing each other over the head in an actual cage match turns out to be real and not just minor-league dick waggling.

I want Marquess of Thunderdome Rules, if it happens.

So if you want to find me on social media, you’ll just have to look where I already am. I’m the guy with the hat unless the temperature is above 40F, in which case I’m the guy without the hat.