I’ve been meaning to write about this for a couple of months: I am now persona non grata at X/Twitter. It’s kind of a shame, as my Twitter conversations were once a major source of inspiration for this blog. But honestly, I don’t miss being on Twitter much these days. What I used to get from it in the way of stimulating discussions with people I agreed with (and more often didn’t agree with) I now get to some degree on Bluesky. More about that in a bit.

Ever since Elon Musk was forced by a judge to make good on his empty threat to buy Twitter last year, it was clear to me that my time on that platform was marked as doomed. I had no intention of paying for a service that was deteriorating in value for me and millions of other long-time users by the day. But I believed I had as good as, if not a better chance to outlast Musk there. I underestimated his tolerance for being profoundly hated, and my own vulnerability to the consequences of that behavioral quirk.

My tenure at Twitter, which began in August 2008, ended in early September, not long after I “celebrated” my 15th Twitterversary. The beginning of the end was my tweet quoting a news story about Australian multi-millionaire Tim Gurner, who told an audience at a “Property Summit” in Sydney, “‘We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40, to 50 percent in my view. We need to see the pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around.”

My response to this heartlessness: “How to get to the front of the line when the guillotines are ready.”