There ya go.
All comfy?
[Kid] Uh-huh.
Okay.
Good night, champ.
[Kid] Daddy?
Yeah, kiddo?
[Kid] . . . Is Twitter gonna die?
Well.
A lot of people are saying that, aren’t they?
[Kid] Uh-huh.
Would that make you sad, if Twitter died?
[Kid] . . . Yeah.
How come?
[Kid] I would miss the memes, and the movie trailers,
and the TikToks.
Can’t you watch TikToks . . . on TikTok?
[Kid] Yeah.
But, Grandpa says TikTok is just harvesting our data for the Chinese.
Eventually everybody’s data gets harvested by the Chinese, son.
What about YouTube?
You can watch movie trailers on there, can’t you?
[Kid] I guess . . .
And most of the best memes come from Tumblr anyway, so you can just go there to find them.
[Kid] But I don’t want to go to Tumblr.
Neither do I, buddy, but sometimes in life you have to do things you don’t want to
do.
[Kid] But why does Twitter have to die?
Well, because a very rich and very foolish man bought it, and has been killing it ever
since through his sheer clueless, incompetent hubris.
But you know what?
Even though it’s sad, it might be for the best.
[Kid] How?
I know Twitter’s been around as long as you can remember, and you’ve had some good
times on there—
[Kid] —like when we bullied Paramount Pictures
to get rid of Ugly Sonic!
—like when you bullied Paramount Pictures to get rid of Ugly Sonic, yes.
But, Twitter hasn’t always been a very nice place.
Lots of times people have gotten picked on even though they didn’t do anything to deserve
it.
Some very bad people have used Twitter to spread lies and get people to believe some
really harmful things.
And you remember the last guy who was President, right?
[Kid] That was Twitter’s fault?
I mean, mostly.
You’re too young to remember, but there was a time before Twitter even existed.
And things were — well, things weren’t fine, but they weren’t any more or less
fine because Twitter wasn’t there.
We got along somehow.
The Earth turned and life went on just like it does now.
[Kid] But I love Twitter.
I know you do, kid.
But, Twitter’s very sick.
And there might not be anything we can do to help it.
[Kid] Nooo . . .
Hey, it’s okay to be sad, okay?
You know, before Twitter, and even before Facebook —
[Kid] Before FACEBOOK?!
Yeah!
Even before Facebook, back a long time ago, the big social network was a website called
MySpace.
And everybody had a MySpace page, just like everybody’s on Twitter now.
But eventually, other websites — like Facebook, like Twitter — came along, and most people
stopped paying attention to MySpace.
[Kid] Did you have a MySpace page, Daddy?
I sure did.
[Kid] Is it still there?
I have no idea.
But, that’s not the sad part.
The sad part is, MySpace is still there.
Even though nobody uses it, lots of us who did use it barely remember it, and most people
your age don’t even know it exists, it’s still there.
Neglected.
Forgotten.
Wasting away.
So, you see, if Twitter does die soon, it might be for the best.
Like when our old puppy dog Max got sick last year, remember?
And it made you sad, and it made me sad, too, but I also knew when I took him to the vet
to have him put down that it was the right thing to do.
[Kid] You said you took Max to live on a farm in
California!
Sleep tight, champ!