blast-o-rama. • issue 065 • 2022-11-13
blast-o-rama.
issue 066 • 2022-11-13
if he’s gonna burn one outlet, might as well build the other
Hello and Happy Sunday.
It’s been a weird week online, folks. After months of rumors, lawsuits and scuttlebutt, we finally got to see the realized version of Elon Musk’s Twitter, and it has been an absolute garbage fire.
We had checkmarks, verifying you were who you said you were and your account was legitimate. Then you could have checkmarks if you paid, but it’s $20 a month. But then paid checkmarks were just $8/mo. Then there were bonus grey checkmarks. Then they turned those off. Then they turned on the $8/mo checkmarks for everyone to buy. Then someone tanked the market capital of a Pharma company. Then the grey ones were back. And now, as of the time I write this, everything is off. Except for the $44 billion ol’ Elon took on to buy the bird app in the first place.
Fun, especially given that Twitter was arguably my favorite online haunt for the (oh good lord) fifteen years I’ve had it. I made friends there. I met my wife there. I kept up with friends there. I laughed there, I vented there, and now I don’t even know if it’s going to make it through the rest of the month, let alone the rest of the year. It’s a bummer. I’m already prepping what to do next — I’ve made a Micro Blog over at Marty.Day (no, really), I’m spinning this newsletter back up, I’ve signed up for some of the many alternatives to Twitter…but there will always only be that ONE Twitter.
What a mess. But what does it feel like to work there? Oh, well…
complete and utter chaos at twitter
We’ve got not one but TWO inside takes on the whole thing.
From Casey Newton’s amazing Platformer newsletter:
If it was terrible to be laid off from Twitter on Friday, many employees found also that it felt terrible to remain. Aside from the email informing them of their continued employment, they had received no communication from Musk and his small council. Half of their colleagues were gone, but no one knew which colleagues. An internal directory had been made inaccessible, and in any case it had not been updated to reflect anyone’s employment status.
And yet still, there was Twitter to run: systems to maintain, code to write, projects to sync up on. And so workers began to create Google Docs listing who they could confirm was still employed at the company. They messaged colleagues on Slack to see who would message back. If the person responded, they got added to the doc.
“We’re basically messaging all our coworkers trying to figure out who’s left, like after a disaster,” one employee told us.
And from Tiffany Hsu at The New York Times…
The order for immediate layoffs, the ensuing panic and the about-face reflect the chaos that has engulfed Twitter since Mr. Musk took over the company two weeks ago. The 51-year-old barreled in with ideas about how the social media service should operate, but with no comprehensive plan to execute them. Then he quickly ran into the business, legal and financial complexities of running a platform that has been called a global town square.
The fallout has often been excruciating, according to 36 current and former Twitter employees and people close to the company, as well as internal documents and workplace chat logs. Some top executives were summarily fired by email. One engineering manager, upon being told to cut hundreds of workers, vomited into a trash can. Others slept in the office as they worked grueling schedules to meet Mr. Musk’s orders.
Twitter, which is under financial pressure from debt and a slumping economy, is now unrecognizable compared with what it was a month ago. Last week, Mr. Musk slashed 50 percent of the company’s 7,500 employees. Executive resignations have continued. Misinformation proliferated on the platform during Tuesday’s midterm elections. A key project to expand revenue from subscriptions hit snags. Some advertisers have been aghast.
Mr. Musk, who did not respond to a request for comment, told employees in a meeting on Thursday that Twitter’s situation was grim.
Gotta love the world of Silicon Valley.
also from across the web
These are the other stories which kept me increasing my Screen Time in a way which causes Apple to shame me every single week. Enjoy.
- How Marvel Snap was designed to fit into your life - The Verge
- Jony Ive on Life After Apple - WSJ
- The Story Behind the Roku Screen Saver - The New York Times
- The Age of Social Media Is Ending - The Atlantic
- How Mem’s note-taking app plans to use AI to create a personal search engine - The Verge
- Can’t Sleep in Hotels? Here’s a TV Tip That Worked for Me. - Vulture
- This Car Cleans the Atmosphere While Driving - CNET
- Andor’s epic episode 10 prison break: A mini Star Wars oral history - Polygon
he was vengeance. he was the night.
Late this week, word came out that actor Kevin Conroy passed away at the age of 66.
Odds are likely that you may not know the name, but I’m pretty sure you know the voice. While he starred on the stage and as an actor on shows like Dynasty, for my generation he is known for one role. Batman.
Conroy first voiced the Dark Knight in the legendary Batman: The Animated Series, which celebrated its 30th Anniversary this year. Subsequent to his performance there, he reprised the role hundreds of times, across episodes of Justice League, films — both direct to video and in theaters, and of course, in video games.
He’s going to be truly missed, and with that, I’d like to share a clip of one of his best monologues as the Caped Crusader.
hey, thanks for reading.
Nice to be back in your inbox on a Sunday Morning. We should do this again soon.
Stay warm out there.
-Marty