Smearing Vicks Vaporub in masks? Ravers were masking before it was cool (I can’t hear “on X” and think oh, an online platform). But I digress …
This has been a banner month for X. Last week, the social network’s built-in chatbot, Grok, became strangely obsessed with false claims about “white genocide” in South Africa—allegedly because someone made an “unauthorized modification” to its code at 3:15 in the morning. The week prior, Ye (formerly Kanye West) released a single called “Heil Hitler” on the platform. The chorus includes the line “Heil Hitler, they don’t understand the things I say on Twitter.” West has frequently posted anti-Semitic rants on the platform and, at one point back in February, said he identified as a Nazi. (Yesterday on X, West said he was “done with antisemitism,” though he has made such apologies before; in any case, the single has already been viewed tens of millions of times on X.)
So, we literally have a song titled Heil Hitler from a prominent artist. I’m sure it’s not the first one crafted on American soil, just as I’m sure little Nazi rallies happen with some frequency nationwide, as these guys just love getting together and being racist fucks.
The now-cliche Nazi bar analogy gets brought into specific relief:
In July 2020, the Twitter user Michael B. Tager shared an anecdote that went viral. Tager was at “a shitty crustpunk bar” when the gruff bartender kicked out a patron in a “punk uniform”—not because the customer was making a scene, but because he was wearing Nazi paraphernalia. “You have to nip it in the bud immediately,” Tager recounted the bartender as saying. “These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend.” Soon enough, you’re running a Nazi bar.
I’d not heard the origins of the term before, so that was a “fun” thing to learn.
But seriously: What the fuck is going on?
As someone who will need to market myself under a pen name soon, I’m not really seeing alternatives they have a youtube like lion-share of the people. I created accounts for Mastodon, Bluesky, and Pixelfed. But, they feel far from adequate. So my plan going forward is to do all those plus twitter even though I loathe it, I got bills to pay.
Some heads up: if you pay for the 🔵✔️ on 𝕏, a lot of people will instantly block you, and your post comments will get filled by other 🔵✔️ people trying to “market themselves”.
You may want to consider creating a second plain account, with proper tags and old fashioned brand building, to increase your reach. Block every 🔵✔️ on that one, to reduce the noise.
I appreciate the advice. This whole thing will be an experience to put it mildly.
you could use some other service as your main channel and only use those to direct people to that other channel. For example when you do some bigger thing. Deny them the content while taking advantage of bigger visibility.
I’ll attempt that when possible.