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After [insert years] in service of shitposting, Twitter died aged [insert age] (Image: Tina Tiller)
After [insert years] in service of shitposting, Twitter died aged [insert age] (Image: Tina Tiller)

InternetNovember 21, 2022

Twitter, 2006 – [insert date here]

After [insert years] in service of shitposting, Twitter died aged [insert age] (Image: Tina Tiller)
After [insert years] in service of shitposting, Twitter died aged [insert age] (Image: Tina Tiller)

The ‘hell website’ we simply couldn’t get enough of has died [xxx add details here]

Serving a short term as the Queen of our dark hearts and home of shitposting, Twitter has died. An official notice has been fixed to the railings of 1355 Market Street by staff who have been locked out since November 18. A statement from Muskington Palace last week signalled health problems were serious: “How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one.”

[Insert tech news site] interrupted its normal broadcast just after [insert time] following a statement from Muskington Palace saying “Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid”. The Palace is very prone to sharing details about Twitter and a recent statement saying “Btw, I’d like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!” was read as a sign things were serious.

This was followed by a poll to Make Twitter Great Again and the reinstatement of Donald Trump, Kanye West, Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson’s Twitter accounts. Users began preparing for the end by hasilty posting their Instagram account details to Twitter last Friday. The news is leading all major media outlets across the Western world and in New Zealand this [insert day here]. This was the official announcement from Dril, published in 2017: “i truly believe that i will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity when i get every single post on hthis fucking website deleted by 2022”.

Mastodon is the reluctant new King, with confirmation that they will be called [insert name, probably Mastodon]. The new King has issued a statement, describing the death of Twitter as [insert statement]. Details of how the federated states of Mastodon will rule is being hastily fleshed out among instance moderators. Birds are expected to descend shortly after Twitter’s passing to escort the fail whale to its final resting place at [insert place name] where it will be reunited with your drafts, Vine, Twitter Music and 140 characters.

It is very eerie re-reading [insert years Twitter was active] of tweets about how everyone truly hated Twitter but remained trapped because literally nowhere else was as good for talking shit, rubber-necking both literal and figurative crime scenes and doing memes/takes/#nzpol. It has been the wish of many that it would all somehow end, but absolutely no one accounted for Elon Musk buying it and the firing of staff via an opt-in Google form.

Tributes and obituaries have been prepared. [Insert number] Substack newsletters have detailed histories and recountings of its short but extraordinary life where it has been described as both vital infrastructure and completely inconsequential. The Herald, RNZ, TVNZ, Newshub and Stuff are all running special live coverage on Instagram. John Campbell was dressed in a dark suit and black tie, in keeping with his dress code for when your advice to “drop him” manifests as the literal option.

Bookshelves everywhere rejoiced at the prospect of finally getting a look in. Twitter’s family all traveled to Instagram and Substack and made it in time before it died. It’s not yet known whether the Duchess of Sussex will travel to Piers Morgan’s house to dance on the grave of his DM’s.  

Jacinda Ardern’s statement expressed New Zealanders’ deep schadenfreude at the passing of Twitter at the hands of Elon Musk, describing him as [a megalomaniac billionaire, probably]. Not making it to 21, Twitter never made a Vine 2.0 video where it outlined why it existed because Vine being rebooted never happened, but we can only imagine it would be a hypnotic loop of “My whole life, whether it be long or cut short by Elon Musk fucking around and finding out, shall be devoted to the service of our great family to which a small but self-described powerful user base belong”. 

‘If you value The Spinoff and the perspectives we share, support our work by donating today.’
Anna Rawhiti-Connell
— Senior writer
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InternetNovember 20, 2022

Limelight: This month’s guide to what’s trending online

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To help navigate what’s going on in the internet universe, we bring you Limelight — a monthly column by our friends at creative studio, Daylight.

Five weeks till Christmas and the internet’s not giving up on its chaos just yet.

Aside from the whole Ye (Kanye) anti-semitism losing a billion dollars in a day dystopian drama, celebrities dressing like other celebrities all Halloween, Elon just doing his usual terrifying thing and the costume packet viral meme no one was safe from, here’s what’s been going on in the internet lately:

Deep ’90s nostalgia

A trend we’ve been affectionately calling “Dawson’s Creek Chic”, this one’s been begging the question lately… are we all just living in a perpetual episode of Friends/Charmed/Aaliyah music video?

From the renaissance of earphones with chords and Windows 95 cursor effects to point-and-shoot cameras, tiny handbags and the wave of 90s banger bands coming on tour (Basement Jaxx, Groove Armada, Fatboy Slim), for anyone alive during that time walking down a main street at the moment has felt like a deep dive back into an era we never thought we’d get back.

Trends have always worked in era cycles, but this latest reach towards a low slung jean, the Ashley Tisdale at the Teen Choice Awards aesthetic, and the huge resurgence of the ecstasy-grunge-club era music reflects a collective reach back to simpler times before Bebo was invented, Life on Mars was a song by Bowie and not a hellscape helmed by Elon Musk. 

Musical agony

With most world borders lifted and people alive with the feeling of… being alive again, gigs are back with a vengeance. But what’s come with it is the revelation that musicians are actually making more money from merch than selling records or touring.

Not to mention the fact that 100,000 songs are being dropped on Spotify a day, which is slowly turning the music-streaming app into YouTube (while YouTube tries to become more like Spotify), and the industry collectively braces itself for Artificial Intelligence to swamp it in one hot beat.

Big Bleak Tech

The post-pandemic boom is really over for Big Tech (think Microsoft, Alphabet, Snap, Meta, Amazon), with many reporting drops in revenue, which are projected to keep falling.

Forbes economist Morgan Stanley thinks the S&P 500 might fall another 10-20% this year after already dropping to 20%. But what does this mean for a simple smartphone owner who doesn’t want to go to space? With over 100,000 jobs lost in tech layoffs this year alone, expect less R&D and buzzy new features and more upgrades on existing software, bug fixes, and splinter platforms to be developed in the wake of Twitter’s recent meltdown. 

Tokification

Think back to the halcyon days when Instagram was just a humble app for photographs and not central to the way we document our lives.

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

Enter TikTok. In a recent newsletter, media company The Future Party wrote about the pressure record labels under to make their songs go viral on the platform to have a sliver of a chance of success. Journalists are pushed to Tokify their articles into 60-second reels, and there’s even been a trend of people self-diagnosing through the platform. If Zoomers are getting not only their news but their medical advice all through an app, it begs the question… who’s going to pay for mainstream media – or anything else – in years to come?

Artificial selfishness

This space is moving quickly, and it’s somewhat frightening to predict how far along Artificial Intelligence will be in six months’ time.

My old ball photo / AI portrait through Draw Anyone (Source: Draw Anyone)

Recently, AI has graduated from controversial graphic design tools like Stable Diffusion to web plug-ins like Draw Anyone. Users submit 5-10 selfies and get back a range of artificially constructed portraits in various different visual presets to choose from (psychedelic? Painterly? Hotter than reality? Dealer’s choice). Its likeness and ability to emulate art styles and intimate details show just how advanced and technical (and… terrifying) development in this space is becoming.

Third-party parties

Instagram’s gotten all upset lately because large-scale influencers have been directing their fans to join them on new platforms like Geneva, Communities and Discord because they’re easier for them to communicate privately with groups, sharing ‘exclusive content’ and, obviously, making money.


In a knee-jerk reaction, it launched a myriad of different products still making their way to the mainstream, like subscriptions, badges for superfans (yawn) and a functionality called Group Profiles that basically mimics Discord. The takeaway? Fandom has never been such a ticket to quitting your day job and making money off your content.

The power of the pod

This American Life spinoff podcast Serial, which launched in 2014, took the world by storm with its 12-part investigation into the murder of a Baltimore teenager in 1999 and created a whole sub-section of true crime pods that we never knew we desperately needed.

Fast-forward nearly eight years later, and this year alone, the subjects of Serial (Adnan Syed), The Teacher’s Pet (Chris Dawson), and Your Own Backyard (Paul Flores) have all been either exonerated or convicted within the last couple of months. What does this tell us? The power and necessity of independent media and investigative journalism is immense, essential, and not to ever be underestimated.

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