Colm O'Regan: Here's why I'm rethinking Twitter — the internet's house-share gone haywire
Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane
Zero Zero Zero. Stark and empty. That’s what it looks like in the new social network the day I join. No one’s listening, I’m listening to no one and I’ve said nothing.
Just like being in an empty room and keeping my mouth shut.
Or real life, as it is also known. I’ve joined Bluesky and Mastodon. Two of the ‘Other places’ people are drifting to in the last while since His Nibs took over.
After a while, the numbers tick up. People I hadn’t seen in a while in the Old Place say hello.
They’ve been here a while. They show me around their place. It’s quieter here, the streets are still empty but there’s definitely no crazies hanging around.
There is an old joke — well not that old — it is social-media based.
You’ll be in one of your niche Facebook groups for people who love asbestos, or The Sullivans, or Spraoi, Siamsa, and Sonas annuals.
Someone will get in a huff and say “I’m leaving this group.”
“It’s not an airport. You don’t have to announce a departure” someone else will reply. Cue cry-laugh emoji reactions all 'round.
So I am not announcing that I am leaving Twitter. No one cares anyway.
But I have found another place and am slowly moving my stuff over bit by bit before my old room is locked.
And that is the main thing it reminds me of. A house-share that started off okay when we were all a bit younger and then got progressively — or rather regressively — more and more deranged.
Like when I moved to Dublin, I shared a house with three sound people but soon one by one they were replaced.
And then one complete mentalist moved in. He ran up a 1300 euro sex-chat phone bill. On the landline we all used.
The bill was itemized so it was thicker than the phonebook when it arrived.
Twitter is like if THAT guy became the landlord. Seriously, think of your worst flatmate.
But inexplicably the original landlord loved him because he brought loads of other weirdos to the house and somehow the house made money and then the landlord said “Maybe I’ll sell to this guy”
Nearly fourteen years on a website. Isn’t that weird? The entire length of a primary and secondary education.
In those early 14 years, I went from a snot-nosed child who was afraid of banana skins to an 18-year-old manchild who was okay with banana skins but possibly still had the same sniffle.
In my Twitter 14 years, I don’t think I’ve grown up to the same extent. But Twitter was good to me.
I started @IrishMammies on it. It was 2011. I had left my job and was ‘tipping away’ I was just back from a reasonably successful Edinburgh Festival.
Two four-star reviews proudly displayed on my car next to the tax disc. The two-star review I got, I don’t know, must have been left in the pocket of my other trousers.
In December 2011, I just started writing these little 140-character things an Irish mother might say — NOT ALL IRISH MOTHERS, OF COURSE — and things just sort of went from there.
I wouldn’t say they snowballed. More gradually acquired a thick moss.
It’s churlish to complain. It’s the end of an era. It’s weird that someone should buy a business and then start taking the taps out of the toilet but lookit, each to his own.
So I’m over on Bluesky and Mastodon. Maybe I’ll post the back catalogue of my worst groaniest jokes just to deter casual fans.
And one day before I have a chance to collect all my stuff, Twitter will have changed the locks.
And at the end of the day, it’s just opinions. And I’ve no shortage of those.
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