A word to the web: Quit wondering whether Meta’s new microblogging app Threads is the “Twitter killer” we’ve all been waiting for. The only app with a chance of killing Twitter today is Twitter itself.
None of the challengers has managed to land the coup de grâce — and it’s unlikely they ever will. They can’t capture the same sense of conflict; there are too many of them for any to feel like the one essential place to be; and most of all, everyone is still too obsessed with Twitter to give something new a chance.
Understanding why Twitter won’t just die already requires understanding what made it so alive to start with. One answer comes from Musk himself: “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.”
He has a point: Just as Gab and Parler never managed to take off because you can’t troll the libs where there aren’t any libs, now it’s fair to wonder whether the libs kind of liked being trolled. Or at least, the back-and-forth, urged on by algorithms with a bias toward the sensational, was what kept everyone, regardless of political affiliation, posting.