It is this endless yelling, this factionalisation, these mindless banter/vendettas, systematic mass-dismissal (read: erasure) of dissenting voices; this religious/political/sexual/gender intolerance, Schadenfreude, and lack of empathy, that X thrives on.
By Sanni Omodolapo
‘X’ stands for something unknown or to be determined. It could also mean that which has been prohibited or proscribed—to ‘X’ a thing is to wear it negativity; in the extreme sense of it, Merrriam-Webster’s dictionary says, it is to obliterate. Yet, Malcom X’s ‘X’ was for reclamation, and there is a quiet appeal in that, an intrigue. There is no symbol with meaning as varied and antithetical as ‘X’.
In 2022, when Elon Musk acquired Twitter in a forty-four billion dollar deal and rebranded it as ‘X’ a year later, reactions to it, as one would expect, were mixed. While some users welcomed the change and some scratched their heads wondering why that had to be, others met it with a shrug.
I fell in the latter category, already quite disillusioned with the app and planning to quit. Plus, it was Elon Musk, he had always struck me as cantankerous, so I expected trouble. It took some time before the blue bird logo changed to the minimalist ‘X’, and this change, heralding many others, opened up a fresh bucket of worms.
But long before Elon’s acquisition, long before his dizzying changes, I had always observed, in exchanges between people, especially when sensitive issues were being discussed, an intolerance for dissent. Anyone who was out-of-step with popular opinion, who dared to think ‘otherwise’, met with fierce resistance.
Often, there was ‘the opinion’, agreed upon, widely accepted, even venerated, and when one appeared that questioned this absolute, whether or not there was sense to it, it was immediately shut down. You were insulted, called names, or, more definitively, cancelled.
There are many stories to tell about this attitude and the rot it engenders, but here is one that exemplifies it, and would prove useful eventually:
In 2024, two writers—the Nigerian poet and critic, Ernest Ogunyemi, and Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera, author of Loss is An Aftertaste of Memories—were engaged in a lengthy argument on X about what it means to be a great novelist, which contemporary writer could/could not reasonably be referred to as one.
It was a heated argument. The two writers sparred for hours; Ogunyemi asserting in his blatant, unfiltered manner, Chukwudera countering his assertions, until Ogunyemi, tired, pulled out.
About a day later, another writer, reader, and leading book influencer, Ezioma Kalu, tweeted about one of Ogunyemi’s comments: he had said during the argument that “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is not a great novelist”, and about this, Kalu had reached a conclusion: he was, and indeed could be nothing but, a sadist.
A rush of comments poured in, all of them singular in their almost-pugilistic reproach for Ogunyemi’s comment about Adichie—who, like it or not, is something of an untouchable folk hero amongst a certain demography.
Kalu responded to the comments in support of hers with a practiced lightheartedness that deflected any serious contemplation. To the comments condemning her harsh dismissal of another writer for holding views different from hers, she said nothing.
No questions about what could have prompted so brave an assertion about Adichie, no desire whatsoever to understand: he had erred and he had to pay. Plain and simple. The mob descended upon him. (When I last checked, the post had been liked 250 times.)
A TIME OUTSIDE THIS TIME
It has become almost impossible, to borrow the expression from Amitava Kumar, to imagine a time outside these strange times, but in the beginning it was not so:
Early iterations of social media platforms (such as Myspace and Facebook) were considerably harmless. In line with the historical inclination towards mass cooperation amongst humans—that primal bond—they met a need for connection on an heretofore unimaginable scale.
They were just, rightly, another point in the evolution of communicative means, for as with precursors such as cave paintings, smoke signals, pigeons, electrical telegraphs, text messaging, emails, etc., people used them to maintain ties with one another.
Everything went to shit, however, in the phase that followed this “communicative-utilitarian” phase: the “Performance” phase, during which focus shifted from staying in touch or connecting, to performance. It was during this phase, in 2009, that Facebook introduced the “Like” button, forever altering how users interacted with posts—Twitter, too, copying this innovation, created the “Retweet” button around the same time.
Where previously it had been enough to just view a post, these buttons became a sort of public endorsement/approval of the post, and with a dynamic like that, coupled with the algorithms Facebook (and Twitter) developed to present users content more likely to generate interactions, came a virile need—a thirst—for visibility and approval.
About this “Performance” phase, the social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, writes in a seminal essay on the role of social media platforms in the structural stupidity of American life that people “became more adept at putting on performances and managing their personal brand—activities that might impress others but that do not deepen friendships in the way a private conversation will.”
After 2009, posts were no longer being made to simply stay in touch. They were primed for virality. If you played your cards right, you could end up being famous overnight, and if you misstepped, well, you suffered it; you were smacked with hateful comments.
No longer was it about one’s true interests or preferences: it became about what worked in these delicate, performative spheres. And the new game operated by new rules: dishonesty, mob dynamics, mutual animosity/intolerance, and, more recently, absence of serious thought/contemplation of any and all subjects.
THE STATE OF THINGS ON ‘X’
The rough beast that X currently is, this hellscape of/for exponential dissemination of crap, untruths, half-baked opinions passed off as final, of unchecked stereotypes and biases, amongst many other things—has its root deep in the “Performance” phase.
In fact, it is smack within what may be classified as its long aftermath: the post-Performance phase, which Haidt, borrowing the biblical metaphor, describes as the post-Babel era, in which “outrage is the key to virality”.
The outrage is engineered for attention, and, as Jaron Lanier notes, “…ordinary people tend to become assholes, because the biggest assholes get the most attention.”
And so we have become even more cut off from one other, despite the illusion of connectivity. We cannot get through no matter how much we try. We either anticipate a response and retaliate with complete non-sequiturs or deliberately misunderstand.
Rather than one global village, what we have are standalone cages, which means a fragmented, fractured relationship with ourselves: acquired, and untested, prejudices: a glorying in the deliberate distortion of humanity in the name of progress (or, that empty word: progressiveness): a boxed mentality that encourages monolithic identity and thought patterns.
All these coupled with a cognitive numbness that makes it impossible to acknowledge what has happened to us, and a lack of (cognitive) flexibility to adjust even when we learn the truth.
Gurri, a former CIA analyst, in a comment to Vox, captures this chaos: “The digital revolution,” he says, “has shattered that mirror, and now the public inhabits these broken pieces of glass…it’s highly fragmented, and it’s mutually hostile. It’s mostly people yelling at each other and living in bubbles of one sort or another.”
It is this endless yelling, this factionalisation, these mindless banter/vendettas, systematic mass-dismissal (read: erasure) of dissenting voices; this religious/political/sexual/gender intolerance, Schadenfreude, and lack of empathy, that X thrives on. It is, in fact, what keeps the light on and ensures yearly revenue quotas are met.
If things were bad in 2009/2013, imagine where they stand now, how precarious a situation we find ourselves in.
IS THERE A WAY FORWARD?
The easy solution would be to quit, pack up your bags and leave—like, say, Teju Cole, the Nigerian-American writer and photographer, who, in an interview, said he left because “it got noisy”.
But so drastic a step can prove difficult, because, for all its ugliness, X is a useful tool. Cal Newport writes that: “There was once a moment when Twitter could provide a useful source of grassroots activism and accountability: early in the Arab Spring, for example, the platform helped topple dictatorships, and it was central to energising what became the #MeToo movement”.
The 2020 #EndSARS protests could not have happened, or gained worldwide attention, without X and other platforms like it (even though not much has changed since then—which is also telling, but don’t quote me).
Quitting, though viable, is not effective. What happens, for instance, to the billion others who go on using the platform and consuming the garbage it daily churns out? What if instead of quitting we took a bet on ourselves?
This would be putting too much faith in humanity’s reasonableness, but we might benefit greatly from a more personal, controlled dousing of the fire. What if Kalu’s supporters were a bit more questioning, not unwilling to point out a blunder? What if they made this small, personal adjustment, rather than endorse error? Wishful thinking, maybe—but, what if?
The future is X-ed—indeterminable, uncertain, unknown—but perhaps we could, on a personal scale, reclaim it, make of the mess something meaningful, learn to hear one another, and think clearly, again?
Sanni Omodolapo is a Nigerian short story writer and (culture) journalist.