Matthijs Sandmann

In case you’ve forgotten what a shithole Twitter used to be before Elon bought it, just head over to Bl**sky. It’s like a Twilight Zone parallel universe over there, where the gangrenous limbs of 2018 Twitter have crawled out of the grave and come back to life, without any of the fun or redeeming qualities we’ve always loved about this place. These guys (I mean “folks,” sorry, I’ll do better about improperly using harmful gendered language) continue to think the Biden-Harris administration has been a resounding success, still believe in the Russian pee tape, and hold out everlasting hope the FBI is going to perp-walk Cheeto Hitler into a GITMO holding cell before the inauguration. It’s like all the people who unironically liked the “Ruthkanda Forever” tweet and carried Robert Mueller tote bags around the Palo Alto farmers market have crowded into the world’s most socially awkward lesbian bar, where you’re only allowed to regurgitate Rachel Maddow-approved talking points and where the bouncer with purple hair, non-binary pronouns, and a Slava Ukraini shirt throws you out if you say anything Jo From Jerzey flags as disinformation. What’s infinitely worse than the NPR-dominated shitlib political milieu, though, is the atmosphere. There’s something about the ambience itself that just feels… wrong. Not truly human. It’s honestly how I imagine East Germany would have felt prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall: a stifling culture of conversational repression and intellectual mediocrity. There’s no room for the spontaneity or risk-taking that serve as prerequisites for flourishing discourse. There are no memes or truly funny jokes (real humor, of course, requiring a tolerance for subversiveness that would undermine the platform’s commitment to “safety”); there is neither the interrogation of grand ideas nor the exploration of great questions. It’s just a never-ending stream of midtwit slop, soulless conformity, and masturbatory virtue signaling. This is what Elon saved us from with his $44B. And not just on Twitter, but across society. Without X serving as the hub of free speech, open discourse, and citizen media, we would have had no hope of withstanding the corporate DEI seminars and the mainstream media struggle sessions, let alone the Silicon Valley FBI liaisons or the government disinformation boards. Free speech itself would be on life support, and the human spirit in our country would shine all the less brightly. Don’t believe me? Go spend 15 minutes on the other app. You’ll see exactly what I mean, and you’ll know this is right. So shine on, you crazy online degenerates. In 2025, keep the memes, offensive jokes, and off-topic shitposts flowing. Lob the craziest stuff you can into the marketplace of ideas, and see what rises to the top. Question the narratives, fact-check the fact-checkers, wrestle with the difficult questions of our age. Wage war for the truth, but always do so with love in your heart, joy in your step, and a smile on your face. Elon spent a king’s ransom to save free speech and bring joie de vivre back to the digital public square. Let’s not squander that—it’s something far more precious than we may realize until it’s gone.