Opinion | Threads, Twitter and the nightmare of new social media networks

Logos for Meta's Threads and Twitter in an illustration. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

5 min

I am having the nightmare again.

They are making us sign up for another social media network.

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This is the real one, everyone says. It has been months, yet they keep saying this. We are all sallow and gaunt from the effort of signing up for all these social media networks, stretched thin across platforms, our fingers aching from all the cross-posting and clicking through terms and conditions without reading them in their entirety. We are running so low on things to post that everyone is resurrecting dire concepts from their drafts folders, ideas that were better off not seeing the light of day. Even prolific posters are showing signs of strain.

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This one is Facebook but not. This imports your Instagram followers and username so you can be eternally punished for having picked an ill-advised username. It is called Threads, in honor of a made-for-TV movie about the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse whose Wikipedia summary alone has given me nightmares. Threads is a thrilling brand of torment for all the people who were good at Instagram because now they are supposed to be doing tweets, and these are two distinct skill sets. It is an equally thrilling brand of torment for all the people who were at home on Twitter because they are unfindable on Instagram, where they formerly exclusively posted photographs of themselves ruining various outfits with the same mustard-yellow sweater, not that I speak from personal experience. The homepage is just anthropomorphic brands trying to engage.

I don’t want to engage with these brands. I am tired.

We fall asleep to the sound of notifications buzzing on our phones, saying that we are being followed and liked; unclear by whom or for what.

We wake up. We are having the nightmare again. They are making us sign up for another social media network. We are so tired, and our fingers are starting to fall off.

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The new social network is called Haps and it is run by Warren Buffett. (The council of billionaires whose whims consume our every waking moment required him to construct one or they would start firing rockets into his Omaha house.) It greets you by asking, “What’s the haps?” and all posts on it are called Berks. If this one doesn’t take off, we will have another in two weeks by billionaire fiat. This is just how we live now.

Elon Musk is apoplectic with rage at this development. (He has been apoplectic with rage for months; this is another feature of Present-Day Life on the Billionaire Apps.) He has demanded that everyone fight him, and there is a new feature on Twitter (if you dare to open Twitter these days) that automatically sends you a detailed verbal description of his genitalia. It would have been a picture, but Twitter is broken and cannot display pictures. No one has asked for this. (That is another feature of New Twitter.) He announces to anyone who cares to listen that Twitter is having unprecedented engagement and more than 200 percent of the world’s population is delighting in it. No one believes him.

You fall asleep to a buzzing of unclear origin. Do you wake up?

I am having the nightmare again. They are making us sign up for another social media network. This one is called Eywa and it is inspired by “Avatar,” and you can pay a premium to give unobtainium to other users. James Cameron is the designated billionaire in charge, even though he is not technically a billionaire. He didn’t want to start it, but the others were getting very aggressive and threatening to fill his submarines with baked beans. Elon Musk has evaporated. Nobody has any thoughts left.

I am having the nightmare again. They are making us sign up for another social media network. This one is for connecting while you dream. Every post is called a tooth, and you can vote to give extra arms to people you follow. Your grandfather is there, but he is a clock now. Are you awake or asleep? If you’re asleep, you’d better be engaging! Post more teeth! The billionaires are still not satisfied. Did you have a mundane thought about how you should not have consumed caffeine after 3 p.m.? Be sure to cross-post it on 73 platforms. It was 65 platforms just a few seconds ago, but now there is another one. This one is the real one.

I am having the nightmare again. We are being asked to join another social media network. It is called Tree Falls In A Forest and you can post and post and post and never make a sound.

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I am having the nightmare again. We are being forced to join a new social media network. To sign up for this one, you have to become a bird and when something surprising happens, you all fly off in the same direction. Unclear which billionaire owns this.

I am having the nightmare again. We are all planted in a field. We are mushrooms. We are all consuming the same dead bird. We are all deathless and trapped here in the echoing silence of our own thoughts forever.

I am having the nightmare again. We are being asked to join a new social media netwo