To tweet, or not to tweet - the question is can the caged bird sing?

Let this sink in: It looks as if Elon Musk has made a royal f**k-up of this Twitter takeover. It’s no longer just an issue of freedom of speech versus so-called liberal fascism. There are countless arguments going either way anyway.

It’s the damn inconsistency of everything. A businessperson such as Musk, familiar with the basic principles of successful marketing, including self-marketing, should have known better. 

The process had mixed messages from the word ‘go’. And now, so much damage has been done to the Twitter brand that it seriously looks as if the breach of trust with a large part of the public has become irreparable.

Can this mess be resolved? No one knows. The situation might look a bit better in a few days’ time.

Or it might look much worse.

From a personal perspective, as a participant on Twitter for many years, I feel badly let down. I cannot bring myself — not yet — to close my account. I stand to lose the loyalty and companionship of the base of the 59,000 followers I have built up over a long period (even though, admittedly, some of them may be bots).

But I have stopped tweeting. 

Some call this “quiet quitting”. That’s the new buzzword, and it applies.

Point is, I just don’t feel at home there anymore. The bird that used to fly freely has now been caged, and that’s simply too terrible to even think of. I did not plan this fiasco, and I had no part in it. 

I didn’t want Twitter to end. I always loved the slight edge of anarchy the platform gave me, the hint of madness and eccentricity, the bizarre mixture of opinions and ideas.

I was even a bit disappointed, a few years ago, when they raised the 140-character ceiling to 280. (It was the sheer brevity of the old Twitter that challenged my creativity.) But still I carried on, regularly updating my posts, checking the trending topics first thing every morning. 

(Image: Supplied)