Let’s Hear it for New York

People write about Twitter like they write about New York City. That's what I hear, anyway. Warm, poetic contemplation on what the place means and the scars both real and imagined that it leaves on the skin of those who live within it. In the wake of the Elon Musk purchase and the chaotic shake-ups, layoffs, plummeting stock, and schadenfreude, I'm guilty of it, too. It makes sense if you were there. If you're from there. 

I only went to New York City once on a trip with my girlfriend about a decade ago. We had been dating for about a year at the time. She's from New Jersey, just a bus ride away. I know a lot of people who live there, or used to live there. When they talk about New York, the way they describe it in tastes and smells and swaying subway cars at night and passing lights and rain-slick pavement, it makes sense. Sometimes "Empire State of Mind'' by Jay-Z and Alicia Keyes comes on while I'm driving. While, yes, maybe it's a bit corny and sentimental, it also feels pretty true of what I know of New York from anecdotes and secondhand stories.

Which I guess is the point of the song. It’s a love letter to a physical and emotional history, tumbling through the decades in an extended lineage of love letters.

I still don't know New York, because I only spent a week there once a decade ago. My greatest understanding of it comes, embarrassingly enough, from NBC sitcoms of the 1990s. Must See TV. When I was eight or nine years old and thought that we all grew up and ended up in New York City somehow, called from the suburban sprawl and rural plains to make a pilgrimage to Manhattan. Of course I thought Friends was a documentary. I lived in a town with one main road, where our public library was a double-wide trailer near the train tracks. Monica Geller looks like a role model when you're eight years old. 

I mean, look at her. She lived in an amazing apartment, had a cute haircut, and, in my favorite period of the show, bagged 80s/90s television sex symbol Tom Selleck. Hell yes, I wanted to be Monica.

But New York City is a fixed point in time and space. It has a lived history for millions upon millions of people living and dead. It is a shifting, evolving record of human history, culture, and politics. Twitter is a website. An application. You can't be born there. You can't die there. It can't raise you. Love you. Reject you. 

And yet one day I woke up, opened the app on my phone, stared at the infinite scroll, and realized I needed to leave.

On the Subject of Digital Citizenship

The internet is untethered from material reality, but it is a lived-in space. Or a series of spaces, rooms sometimes empty and sometimes bustling, connected by impossibly rambling corridors. I left LiveJournal. DeviantART. Anime and web comic forums of the early 2000s. Facebook. Matryoshka dolls of cultures with their own languages and codes of conduct. I joined them, met people, lived there, and then left. They were places I logged into on the computer. I became whoever I was when I signed into that account, and talked to people. Some of those people I still talk to today because we're still friends, or at least friendly. 

The sum emotional totality of these interactions and relationships were not always productive or positive, but they were human. It's easy to rhapsodize or demonize these places as Simply Good or Purely Bad but they're just places. A framework for communication, skeletons that house the humans inside them. They are what we make of them.

I don't know what to make of Twitter. My account is twelve years old. I started using it on a whim when my girlfriend said she liked it and it was easy to talk to people. Facebook was my platform of choice at the time. I don't even remember when I started using it, honestly. Was it fifteen years ago? Sixteen? My friends were there and writers were there, so I was there.

Over time, I began to feel completely disconnected from everyone and everything on it. Confused as to what to do with it. Was it a blog? Was it a marketing platform? The culture changed as the years went on and Facebook did the things it did. It started to feel like a machine for conflict and I didn't want to use it that way. So I left. I deleted my account a few years ago. I have not felt the need to go back since. 

In that time, Twitter has become many things to me. A place to share observations and think aloud about the things that interest me. To rant, to do rhetorical battle and rattle sabers. To market my writing and broaden my audience. To tell jokes. To talk to the little people who live inside my phone who might even be my friends sometimes. 

It always felt important to be there. Twitter was the place where things happened. It was the home of breaking news and bleeding-edge cultural discourse. Global uprisings and revolts were documented, gained momentum, and received context there, propelled by the voices of those in the center of the unfolding events. Videos of state violence and war crimes spread to fuel public outrage and, sometimes, direct action. Villains were exposed and heroes given higher profiles. The president may or may not have been tweeting about illegal activity he was participating in at any given moment. And, unfortunately, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was one of the few places you could get at least somewhat reliable information when the local, state, and federal governments abandoned its citizens to make the stonks go up.

You had to be there so you knew what was going on. It took days for jokes and memes to trickle to other platforms as screenshots. Everything felt vital and you were a part of it because you saw it happen. Twitter was a living historical document and you were an active participant.

Except when you weren't, because how could you be? You're just a person on a website.

Except when it was a harassment machine used by politicians, grifters, and pundits to further their careers through terrorizing vulnerable populations under the guise of "free speech" and "just asking questions." Have you ever watched all your friends lose their accounts over and over because they said a mean thing to someone who threatened to rape or mutilate them? I have. I’ve nearly lost my account a few times whenever I was mass reported by people “just asking questions.”

Except when you felt that a few thousand followers and a rudimentary understanding of some popular social justice terminology made you an unquestionable moral authority. The warm brush of attention against our fingertips makes tyrants of us all.

Except when petty grievances and minor conflicts were elevated to world-shattering importance. When everything was forced into every other conversation and you couldn't move, couldn't breathe without someone screaming that you were hurting them, you were a monster, a degenerate, a freak because…

You know.

You said a thing.

Or someone was bored and wanted to mess with you.

Whatever.

This isn't simply a reality or function of Twitter in and of itself, of course. The internet is a vile place for all its virtues and positive potential. But it is how I conceive of Twitter. It is a locked room where people go to scream and scream and scream. After twelve years, I have been traumatized by people on the site and the various cultures that fester on it. Screenshots of my posts and my face made it to KiwiFarms. Screenshots have been sent to an employer and the local police. Shared around locked accounts and Discord servers to accuse me of everything under the sun. I've had at least two encounters with what I will uncharitably call stalkers that have left me very upset over the last two years.

Then I made some friends and sold some books.

That was pretty nice.

And yet I'm left with only questions. What does any of that even mean on social media? What are friends? What is an audience? What counts as community? How do you know how to tell anyone apart? Perhaps I'm just so broken by the last twelve years on Twitter that I don't really know what to make of my experiences and relationships there, but I don't know what to make of them. They are at once a source of creature comfort and a deep well of panic and despair.

I just woke up one day and realized that I didn't need to be there anymore.

But what does that even mean? What even is the choice being made? Not posting? Deleting my account? Asking people to follow me elsewhere? Just posting the same jokes, writing the same rants, using the same tone somewhere else, shaped by a site that cooked my brain like an egg on hot pavement? I'm just being publicly broken on another site I don't own, for an audience whose motives I will never know, because I need an outlet throughout the day. 

Before, when I worked in restaurants around people all day, I used the internet to escape and talk to others who enjoyed the things I did. Then I worked in an office full of people all day, and I couldn't talk about my interests or passions because they didn't get it. Now I work at home alone for eight hours a day. I want that outlet. I want somewhere to be funny and think about art and talk to people when I'm alone and everyone else is too busy at work to message me back.

There are other places. Other platforms, sites, skeletons that house our thoughts. There's Discord, but it's another series of sometimes empty, sometimes bustling rooms. I never know what to say or if I should say anything at all. Usually I just run into people who know me for my Twitter, and it just feels like being congratulated for being loud and rude in a way they happen to like. There's Hive, which is broken and full of people shilling at each other in increasingly loud, off-puttingly nice voices. TikTok was engineered in a lab to annoy me. Instagram is like being at a stranger's very large, very nice house during a party, looking but not touching. Tumblr makes my brain scream and gasp for air as I drown in nostalgia for 2015 pop culture ephemera. Cohost feels like I'm being flexed on by coders and developers all day. Mastodon is like doing math homework and being screamed at for not enjoying it. And I already deleted Facebook.

Then there's Twitter.

So why am I whining? Why did I leave? Why am I writing about Twitter like people complain that people write about New York?

Who am I without Twitter?

The answer is, I don't know.

But I just don't think I can be there anymore.

But Anyway

No, I wasn't going to leave it all there. I just like the drama.

Of course, the above was what I first wrote on the topic. I show you the wounded, bleeding draft that I wrote in under an hour like letting out a sob. Rather, a scream. It is what I felt, and how I've been feeling off and on for years but especially the last few weeks. I feel things very strongly, or so I've been told. It isn't always so romantic as sentimental diatribes about cities. It usually feels like a raw nerve feels.

Like screaming feels.

But that's the sticky thing about all this. It's a matter of fallen trees. If I'm not posting publicly in front of the largest audience I've ever managed to cultivate, will anyone care about me? If I'm not posting on The Website For Writers, does anyone even know I exist? How can I prove I ever existed at all?

The answer is yes, obviously, I exist and people care about me. Slow down there, Shinji Ikari. Yet no matter how clearly and cogently I understand that Twitter feeds my worst, most paranoid, most self-loathing tendencies, I still fall prey to its most compelling narratives. You simply must go to the screaming room and involve yourself in the screaming, even when it's inflicting real and measurable harm on you. Especially then, actually, because that is what it means to be resilient and successful. Stand up to the haters or whatever. Otherwise, there's no way of knowing if your existence matters. Perform or perish. Post or lose everything. 

Because, yes, life as an independent artist demands that you cultivate an audience. There's no marketing behind you but you. I would be lying if I said that social media in general and Twitter in particular didn't help me promote my work to new audiences. Posting regularly about my writing, whether it's new releases or sales on older work, puts new eyes on it. It helps spread word of mouth. A tweet I spent a minute writing and formatting often leads to a dozen or more sales on any given day. The return on investment is high in that regard. 

But I also know I have an audience. I've been writing and publishing for a decade. Even if it's the size of a pea, I have an audience. That audience subscribed to this newsletter. It followed me to other platforms. It will be there when I put the next thing out. Being on Twitter for over a decade helped me grow that audience, yes, but I am the reason for that audience. Twitter is the carnival barker. I am the main attraction. Jack and Elon can eat rocks for all I care.

Moreover, the web of friends and associations I have made through Twitter is still largely intact. Anyone I'm not following on Twitter, I subscribed to their newsletter, YouTube channel, or Patreon. Maybe we exchanged Discord usernames. Maybe we're on other platforms already. All that changes is that I just won't see their tweets anymore. Neither of us died just because the bird app is a downer to be on. The desperate panic over being severed from personal and professional associations stops weighing on you when you just…exchange contact information.

As for those who I have already or will eventually lose contact with, such is life. Maybe we’ll meet up again. Maybe we won’t. Relationships are fluid, finite things. I'm not entitled to anything or anyone for the rest of my life, no matter how soothing an idea it is to have a discernible community to plug myself into. Was I even actively involved in any specific community for the twelve years I was on Twitter? I don't know, but I don't think so. Not really, anyway. I was all over the place and nowhere at all. That is part of life in the digital age, as well. I learned that lesson on Facebook like I learned it on LiveJournal before it. I was just talking to people. They were talking to me. Whatever came of it did.

None of which is me attempting to say it doesn't matter. I recognize that it does very much matter. I feel for people who can't just leave. Whose livelihoods, businesses, organizational work, and social lives truly are dependent on Twitter. For all the terror Twitter has rained down on countless people, I understand its necessity. It is a matter of community and survival for those whose lives have been forcibly enmeshed with it through the nature of commerce and human connection in an intensely alienated and alienating time. And I empathize with them and wish it wasn't so, since I simply don't know what else to do or say about that reality.

The point is, I -- the only person living this life at this moment in time -- will be fine. The internet will just be quieter for a while as far as I'm concerned. I will have to rewrite the pathways in my traumatized brain, conditioned as I am to compulsively go on Twitter for my hourly hit of fear and loathing. My shitposting will have to adapt. I may have to tell fewer jokes and post more long-form art thoughts. 

And it feels…fine. Alright. Not good, per se. This isn't a New York thing. After years of being told that I was nothing without Twitter and a writer is nothing without the community on Twitter, at least I've managed to unchain myself from it.  

Life goes on.

I keep writing and working.

That's all I can do.

Other Notes

Serge of Cold Crash Pictures is one of my favorite movie guys on YouTube. I think he has an interesting body of work, covering a broad range of genres and subjects from Godzilla and dinosaur movies to musicals and comedies. His willingness to interogate his own experiences and views is very appealing as someone who is admittedly pretty into personal writing.

His most recent video essay is an honest, perhaps uncomfortably so, contemplation on revenge narratives and the different forms that justice can take. I found his takes engaging and generous, willing to go the distance with the subject in a way that I think it’s natural to shy away from. Revenge is satisfying to partake in and argue for as a vehicle for catharsis, but frequently uncomfortable to discuss for some of its nuances. So good job, Serge.

And because I’m feeling spry today, I will also recommend his essay comparing 1954’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers to 1987’s Overboard. It’s very good. His mom is in it.

Coming Attractions

Thank you for stopping by. When we next meet, we will be discussing books, manga, and anime. By which I mean I will be ending this year’s tumultous ride of thoughts, essays, and personal writing with a long, rambling treatise on all things JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Yes, there will a surprise second newsletter this month, baby. That’s the Magen Cubed style you’ve come to know and love.

Here’s a bit of what we can all expect:

There now sits a dog-eared, highlighted copy of Manga in Theory and Practice by Hirohiko Araki on my bookshelf. Though fairly new, I have dragged it around, dropped it, bent pages, and held it open so long that it now flops to those sections when picked up again. New to me but well-loved already. It's on the shelves of most artists I know and something that comes up a fair bit in the circles I run in. I always threatened to read it over the years, every time it came up in conversation with a pleasant sigh of "Aw, man, I love that book."

At the risk of being dramatic, I really wish I had read it sooner. I also get that it was probably for the best that I waited to read it until I did.