I understand where Katie is coming from (and many of the commenters here) about reinstating Jesse's tweets, but I don't really agree. The emphatic pleas for Jesse to restore his tweets demonstrate how unhealthily addicted we all are to this mess. I applaud anyone (such as Jesse or Sam Harris) who pulls the plug. It's medicine that we don't want, but need. The significance of Twitter needs to fade, and that won't come without some costs.
Agree 100%. Twitter is irrelevant to the vast majority of people. And it's actively damaging to most users, granted more so to some than others. Get off, delete, enjoy life.
Twitter *is* irrelevant to most people. But Twitter is highly relevant to journalists. And what journalists write is relevant to most people. Twitter content drives news content. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Anyone with a big platform on Twitter is capable of influencing journalists’ narratives. That’s why I think Jesse should restore his account. (And give someone else the keys, for his own mental health.)
I quit Twitter 3 years ago and would advise anyone else to do the same, but I do strongly think Jesse should leave his tweets up as an archive/resource instead of allowing the account to be deleted.
I agree on diminishing the significance of Twitter, but not with the rest of your post. If Jesse is struggling with how to respond to pile-ons, he should obviously take a break. But deleting his entire profile, which contains links to his articles and also well thought-out responses to critics, seems extreme and kind of dramatic. Basically, Jesse didn’t need to nuke his account to avoid engaging with trolls. He could just...not tweet and turn off notifications.
I can’t imagine dealing with the lies and vitriol Jesse faces daily on Twitter. Anything he needs to do to stay sane, I support! But this was not even close to his only option and Katie is right to point out the downsides.
I don't disagree there are downsides. I just think they are worth it. For someone addicted to Twitter, it may not be so simple to just .. not tweet and turn off notifications.
Is the percentage of people who actually go trawling through historical twitter posts looking for links to articles and well thought-out responses to critics.
For an addict, this is not enough. I think him taking the big step is good for him, from how he talks about it. He’s still getting drawn into reading things, though, which is not great. But it’s also not the worst thing.
I agree completely. As long as the account still exists, the possibility remains of getting angry enough at something to log back on and getting trapped again. The only way to be free is to delete your account. If the archive is so important, he should download it, host it somewhere, and give Katie a link.
I am very with you. I don’t actually necessarily think the argument to reinstate his account has any validity. What I do think is that Jesse is right, this shit doesn’t matter. Katie would make a good drug dealer.
I both agree with Katie that Jesse's twitter archive shouldn't be deleted because it could stand as a record of how much bad-faith pointless shit he's gotten over the years (and as a testament to his responsibility as a journalist), but I totally agree with Jesse that it isn't true or possibly wouldn't even matter if bad-faith criticizers "got what they wanted" by him leaving twitter because he's basically an outrage-cow to these people--his detractors *obviously* don't really read his work, and will just move on. I think he has a lot of cred and should run with it while he has it.
BTW I skipped back randomly to an old BARpod episode today and not only did it just so happen to appear to be the first Jude Doyle-mentioning one, but it also happened to be one in which Katie mentioned having raised over $50,000 in "reward" money to get Brianna Wu to produce "the receipts" she claimed to have against Jesse, which funds I believe may 2 years later be yet unclaimed? I totally forgot about that. Katie's such a badass.
I'm sorry if this sounds blunt, but: I honestly lose respect for online writers when I see them get deep into fights on Twitter. Making a statement re: demanding correction of a published falsehood, sure; it sucks, but sometimes you need that public attention to convince an unscrupulous publisher to cave. But chasing down dozens of randos to go CAN YOU BACK UP THAT POINT? AREN'T YOU WRONG? DON'T YOU THINK IT'S CLEAR YOU'RE WRONG? CAN YOU CITE A SOURCE? is embarrassing. No, they can't cite a source. They have no interest in citing a source. Truthiness, not truth, is the point to them. I read a good newsletter post and I think, "This person thinks and speaks seriously and with consideration;" I see that kind of Twitter behavior, which Katie refers to as defending one's reputation, and I think, "Maybe this person is no more serious than the people they're getting into slapfights with."
I say this as someone without a Twitter account. The Twitter drama is free if I want to make an account and go see it for myself. The substantive reporting is what I get form Jesse's newsletter that I can't get on social media. When multiple newsletter posts in a row are entirely based on debunking idiotic quote tweets from unserious people, I get bored and irritated, because I don't really get the Twitter lingo anymore - it changes all the time - and a lot of the people quoted are only considered major figures on Twitter and aren't familiar to me.
I understand sometimes you have to quote a social media post in order to make a point, and I understand that if you're interested in any issue that touches modern journalism you have to put up with some Twitter-centric stories. That's fine! But good long-form writing stands on its own. There are plenty of people actually reading it. You will never change a single Twitter rando's mind, no matter how well you defend yourself. Every victory won on Twitter is hollow.
The problem with Twitter is that there’s no way to win by being right. Like if you disputed something and there was a big community notes battle where the concern was substantively adjudicated and all the people who were doing crazy stuff were noted and paid some repetutational price it would be different. It’s all sound and fury that unfortunately to Katie’s point has an outsized effect on journalists.
I agree with a lot of this, but I see the logical conclusion of this train of thought to be "...therefore, I should just make my twitter write-only", not "...therefore, I should cause the burning of the Library of Alexandria (but for Bussy Singal tweets)".
I was on Twitter for a long time – 2012 to 2020. I took several breaks, a couple more than six months long. There was no combination of settings and no level of Twitter hygiene that could prevent me from using it badly. If I let myself back on for any reason, within a few days, I would be just as addicted as I ever was. there’s no holding yourself to rules like “just don’t reply to people“ when your use of it is that compulsive.
I honestly don’t buy this idea that his Twitter archive is all that important. I don’t actually know how common it is for people to go digging back for good points they saw ages ago. Twitter is of the moment; it trades out its controversies every couple of days. I don’t think Jesse having his archive up on Twitter is going to do any more to convince people of his views or do any good work on the issues that his longer-form writing doesn’t do.
Strongly agree. And I think the idea of needing to “preserve the archive” is just another way to cling to the idea that one day you’ll be vindicated, one day you’ll show them they were wrong. But that won’t happen. Twitter is completely ephemeral except in that old dumb tweets can come back and get you in hot water (maybe not so much for the self-employed). Otherwise it’s ripples on a pool. Nobody will ever look back and care - YOU will not look back and care, because life is too short.
The articles, the episodes, they have some lasting value. The twitter slapfights mean nothing.
I am such a Twitter addict and it's really not good for me, and hearing those of you wiser than myself talking about getting away from it... are inspiring.
Honestly, when I quit it had nothing to do with willpower. There just kept coming points where it was making me so actively miserable, quitting was easy. When whatever else was making me sad and angry had passed, I'd come back, and it would be fine until something else made me sad and angry and it became so miserable I left again. Finally at some point I was sufficiently sad and angry, and Twitter was making me sufficiently miserable, that I nuked the account one day to the next - no announcement - and felt no desire whatsoever to reinstate when 30 days were up.
The most startling thing was that not a single friend whose woke-posting had been driving me to despair noticed I had left. I left Instagram at the same time, and no difference - not a single person noticed the void my posts had left, and in fact no one knew I was gone until I mentioned it offhand an entire year later. I don't think this is an indictment of my friends (who obviously didn't forget I existed IRL), I think it shows how meager the "social" aspect of Twitter actually is for a lot of people.
Yeah this is the exact journey of an addict. I’ve been there but with actual drugs. That’s why I think Jesse’s choice is right. The journey to quitting involves a bunch of relapses and some of those were when you were ready to quit for a little bit but you justified certain use cases because you didn’t have enough experience yet to realize that you were giving yourself a path back. I’m honestly concerned that he’s still reading some Twitter. Twitter is not meth, but it is a dopamine effect, and meth is also an admittedly more intense dopamine effect. I hope that the outs he’s leaving himself (reading Twitter; the supposedly automated Twitter account for advertising his posts) don’t end with him back on Twitter, because I think Twitter is really bad for him. I am worried they’re going to end up with him back on Twitter, however.
Yeah, I know for my part it would end with me back on Twitter. One of the best Twitter features ever was the one that would lock you out of continuing to read if you weren't logged into an account after looking at a small number of tweets per day. I'm at the point where I look at people's feeds very rarely and have no temptation to make an account at all anymore, but that feature stopped me from going back constantly after my account was nuked "just to see what people are saying."
Eventually, if you do that, you will see something you HAVE to respond to, it's just too awful, it's too wrong, it's too funny, it's too important, and then it's like... well, I have to be back for the entirety of the aftermath, I have to see this through to its conclusion, I have to know how the argument ends. But the scroll is infinite, the argument never ends, and there will be something equally awful/wrong/funny/important every 48 hours or so thereafter for as long as you keep looking.
JESSE. Give her the keys. Give Katie the keys. She’s right. Stay away for your own mental health; take time to reboot your brain. But don’t let the bastards think you’ve quit.
I voted give Katie the keys because I think Jesse can get to a point where he knows his account exists and he won't be tempted to return to it. I think he will get there pretty soon. Like a week or two.
Jesse’s account doesn’t matter. None of his replies matter. None of the Twitter shit matters. So what Jesse should do is what matters for his mental health.
As a smaller content creator who makes content about trans issues, I have dozens of Jesse's tweets bookmarked - his Twitter is an extremely useful resource! It was quite annoying when he deleted his old Tweets, and now that his account is gone, I can't even access the ones that remain. Please give Katie the keys!
Thank you! That's very kind. I want to work on improvement my content quality before I start actively promoting my content, but I hope to revamp my Substack soon!
Indeed - Jesse has no obligation to keep his Twitter up. I just think it would be nice if he did! I suppose I'm having trouble seeing how it would be to his detriment to have the account up but with Katie (or whomever) holding the keys. He's just one of the best journalist on the topic of trans issues, and it's often useful to have links to the articles/studies he mentions. Ultimately, it is a minor thing though, so if he truly doesn't think it's in his best interest, I will survive without his tweets :)
"As a thinker", I wonder why you don't see this as a golden opportunity to produce original research and present arguments of your own? Fill the void he leaves behind with that "content" you "create".
That's not what Katie was proposing. Her idea is to restore his tweets to visibility and dampen the jubilation of the people who think they drove him off Twitter (and into the pen). She wouldn't be tweeting in his name - she's too busy sharing delicious TikTok cooking tips https://twitter.com/kittypurrzog/status/1637665791482142721?s=20
Letting him back in at some future date when he's thoroughly detoxed, I suppose. Caitlin Flanagan does something like this when she feels like she's getting too sucked into Twitter, except she hands the keys to one of her sons.
I think the point would be to set it up so he *can’t* get back in whenever he wants. The point of deleting his account is to keep from being tempted to go back on there. Katie wants his tweets to stay up, so she’s saying he should not delete the account and instead keep himself from going back on there by giving her control over access to it. So presumably she’d get the password and the recovery email would be changed to hers. Similar to giving your car keys to a friend when drinking.
FWIW, I think this is unnecessary and puts them both in a weird position if he later demands she give the keys back, so I think he should just delete it.
I'd go with 'I violate Hippo statues!' It'd be dicey. Some would worry it'd give other people the wrong idea about them, others would worry it'd give people the right idea about them.
Even in this heterodox group will nobody ask if the HIPPO was asking for it? Maybe they were sending out the vibes that they wanted it. Come on, are we reactionary neo-cons or radfems, make up your minds!
Jesse: Katie's right about the "unforced error." Your tweet ARCHIVE is so important, because it shows you tearing down all the ridiculous, spurious accusations leveled at you over the years. (Also you have created a lot of great threads that aren't just responding to the BS from your adversaries!)
You don't have to ever tweet again, but those previous tweets speak for themselves.
IIRC Twitter used to keep your archive for a month after you delete, so (if that's still true) Jesse has plenty of time to change his mind or give the keys to someone responsible. And yeah, I'm with Katie in not wanting to see the tweets gone forever.
I just made the connection that the same Alejandra Carabello who started the "Jesse left Twitter in shame because of HIPAA violations and also because he didn't get a meme" discourse also started the "Greta Thunberg's amazing Twitter dunk got Andrew Tate arrested" story.
"It's like someone read a better newspaper and now they're trying to text you everything they can remember. Doesn’t have to be right, just has to be short."
More seriously: Katie's completely right on this one. Jesse deleting his account is bad both because the morons can use it to declare victory and his useful archive of tweets is lost.
1. As a non-LDS Christian, I agree with the positive stereotype that Latter-Day Saints are nicer than we are. (We cradle Presbyterians, in contrast, are better known for telling all the other Christians—including the other Presbyterians—why they're wrong about Christianity.) One of my best friends, who was a committed LDS member for the first half of our friendship and has since left the faith, used to invite me ever so nicely to her church and now invites me ever so nicely to Sunday brunch. I've never been able to go because I spend Sunday mornings getting religion with the other cranky Christians in my own tradition, but I can see that my friend was/is way nicer than me in both her mid- and post-faith phases, and I try to emulate her. I was also impressed by the thoughtfulness of our LDS commenter who posted here explaining garments last week.
2. I've always been #TeamJesseStayOffTwitter. You can't win an argument about the facts with people who don't care about the facts. As Katie points out, these people won't even click through to Jesse's articles. They'll never care to learn what he's actually written, and his tweeting back at them won't change that, because they just want to win on Twitter rather than log off to become more informed by reading elsewhere. Jesse's established enough in his career to make a living outside Twitter, so more power to him.
Boy, they’re not nicer. They’re nicer on the outside. They’re deeply cruel on the inside. This is a church that, when one parent decides to step away from the religion, will encourage divorce because the family can’t go to the celestial kingdom together otherwise. It’s gross. The niceness is skin deep.
I mean I hear what you’re saying about how it can affect people when they leave the faith, because the niceness has been socialized. But most don’t leave the faith. I don’t think Mormons are especially bad in this regard (and I don’t give a fuck that they want to be called LDS; lipstick on a pig), but the niceness is a facade.
Actually, it depends on the individual bishop and spouse. (I know because this came up when my friend and some of her siblings left the faith. They ultimately all stayed married, but it was a source of stress initially.)
That is very different from what would happen in my tradition if my spouse or I left (we don't consider leaving the faith a justification for divorce), and I'm not going to defend it. But it's also pretty darn common for forms of religion with high levels of observance to put a lot of pressure on people to marry and raise their kids in the faith. I consider the LDS practices here to be a variation on a theme, rather than an anomaly.
No I agree, Mormonism is not any worse than any other religion. I criticize it, especially as a former member, but I don’t think it’s especially bad. You say that it depends on the individual bishop and spouse, and you’re probably right. I’ve never seen a situation in which the church didn’t push for a divorce. Perhaps you have. There’s strong theological justification for them to do so. Again, this is no better or worse, but my point is that the niceness of the church is skin deep. It’s a facade.
1. I think most people who've heard of these religions understand that both Nicene Christians and the LDS consider their belief systems to be mutually exclusive. For those who don't understand that, well, it just takes a few minutes of reading or conversation to find out.
2. I don't really have a problem with researchers putting the LDS in their "other Christian traditions" bucket when they do or cite surveys. That's just respecting how people identify without necessarily endorsing a particular theology, much as historians do when they talk about ancient Arian Christians. The alternative would be for researchers to become the arbiters of who is "really" Christian. As somebody who knows enough academics to be familiar with the median professor's feelings about evangelicals, Catholics, and Pentecostals, I would rather than we went with self-ID in public discussions and let people hash out who's a heretic in intra-church contexts.
What is a Shibboleth for than this exact instance? We just need to have that be part of a survey, like "is Jesus God or just a brother of Satan?" and then we can root out the fakes
I believe the common understanding of Christian is any faith that believes that Christ is the son of god and base their beliefs on his teachings.
Mormon's fall very squarely in that category. There are lots of modern Christian sects that reject the "authenticity" of other Christian sects. . . . . it's kind of the whole reason we have different sects.
To most thinking of them as different is as baseless as trying to reject some sects of Buddhism as "more buddhist" or "true buddhism" compared to others.
Jesse still checking twitter during his break: very bad.
Giving Katie the keys: even worse.
Jesse very clearly has a bad relationship with twitter where, him as a honest and ethical person doesn't stand a chance against people who don't care about either of those things. This isn't cowardice or backing down from the fight, this is choosing to not enter a word fight when you know your opponent is using their fists. If they aren't going to follow logical arguments and discussion and instead continue to mudsling, there's little to be gained to continue to argue. There's an argument that the non-replying lurkers will become informed, but the negative affect on Jesse's mental health isn't worth the trade-off.
Deleting the account is a bad idea. I said this before when he first talked about purging old tweets, removing history only gives others the change to make up their own. Even if Jesse (rightly) doesn't want to engage with these fools, not having the easy-to-showcase historical tweets makes anyone having that argument on their behalf that much harder. I know Jesse has stated bluntly to not fight on his behalf, but it's inevitable for him and his work to come up in these discussions about GAC and without easy access to his tweet 'database', anyone looking to use his educated and informed takes comes up blank.
While I support giving someone the keys to the account as a better way to break the addiction, I don't think it should be Katie - not because I don't trust her to protect it, but having a co-host bear the burden will only need to unnecessary drama down the line if/when Jesse wants account access back. There's an argument to be made that having to grovel to Katie for access back to the account is a great deterrent, with Katie's penchant for mockery, but I just see it as a pain point that could potentially negatively affect things.
I do agree with Katie that twitter reputation is more important than it may seem. Yes, the streets of twitter are filled with lunacy, but anyone uninformed trying to get a read on someone/something is going to use it as a resource.
Hypothetically, someone new to this debate reads something by/about Jesse. They decide to dig into him to see if he's reliable. The first 3 google results is his Wikipedia, his personal website, and then his substack. While wikipedia is 'unbiased' it's not going to give you a read on his day-to-day and his self-published outfits will obviously paint him favorley.
The fourth link is the GLADD link. Someone reads that and, due to the gish gallop that the article is, they follow the links to twitter, maybe even searching for his name. All they will find is he used to have an account and the top rated/liked posts on the subjects are all about how he got a joke wrong and was, in their minds, rightly bullied off the platform.
When you remove your whole archive, anyone new to learn about Jesse will be mostly met with lies. While you can't ever convince the liars of the truth (because they don't care), having your twitter archive greatly aids in uninformed source becoming more informed on your actual self instead of the caricature painted by these bad faith twitter goons.
Reactivate the twitter, make it your bio that "I only respond to tweets on premium episodes of my podcast" and then follow through on that. They want the responses to their takes, make them pay, and stay stress free never feeling the need to respond to these people. Considering most of these people don't even have $5, they'll never know if you responded anyways :)
100% agree. Reactivate the account to save the archive. Make the statement in the bio. Hire someone to post your articles, or set up something (like zapier) to post articles without logging in. Make Twitter a one-way flow of putting stuff out there and do not interact at all. At all.
To me, that’s the best option. We keep the archive, Jesse doesn’t directly interact with Twitter *at all* anymore.
And Jesse, stop lurking on Twitter. Your dramatic exit says that you *know* you need to go cold turkey… so do it. I’m really looking forward to your post Twitter-brain content. Do not even peep at the crazies. You’ve got this.
I agree that would probably be the best option that would get him off twitter without creating the impression he'd been run off. BUT, do we think Jessie is capable of having a Twitter account and not using it? Or will he think "I'm sure it will be fine if I just have *one*" only to wake up six hours hours later with no recollection of events, a dozen unanswered messages from Katie and a suspiciously sore ass (figuratively speaking).
I just stopped the ep to come say that Jesse, you should give her the keys. I’ve never posted anything here before because I’m embarrassed to even be associated w such a felonious, horse-and-hippo violating podcast, but this issue is too important for me to stay silent any longer.
Sweet! Jude tweeted out a link (via screenshot) to this ep. Unfortunately, the free promo didn’t get much traction.
https://twitter.com/byJudeDoyle/status/1637188408408776705?s=20
Oh look Jude also thinks Jesse’s going to journojail! Can’t make this stuff up.
What episode is Katlyn Burns talking about?
I understand where Katie is coming from (and many of the commenters here) about reinstating Jesse's tweets, but I don't really agree. The emphatic pleas for Jesse to restore his tweets demonstrate how unhealthily addicted we all are to this mess. I applaud anyone (such as Jesse or Sam Harris) who pulls the plug. It's medicine that we don't want, but need. The significance of Twitter needs to fade, and that won't come without some costs.
Sorry for being a downer!
Agree 100%. Twitter is irrelevant to the vast majority of people. And it's actively damaging to most users, granted more so to some than others. Get off, delete, enjoy life.
Twitter *is* irrelevant to most people. But Twitter is highly relevant to journalists. And what journalists write is relevant to most people. Twitter content drives news content. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Anyone with a big platform on Twitter is capable of influencing journalists’ narratives. That’s why I think Jesse should restore his account. (And give someone else the keys, for his own mental health.)
I quit Twitter 3 years ago and would advise anyone else to do the same, but I do strongly think Jesse should leave his tweets up as an archive/resource instead of allowing the account to be deleted.
I agree on diminishing the significance of Twitter, but not with the rest of your post. If Jesse is struggling with how to respond to pile-ons, he should obviously take a break. But deleting his entire profile, which contains links to his articles and also well thought-out responses to critics, seems extreme and kind of dramatic. Basically, Jesse didn’t need to nuke his account to avoid engaging with trolls. He could just...not tweet and turn off notifications.
I can’t imagine dealing with the lies and vitriol Jesse faces daily on Twitter. Anything he needs to do to stay sane, I support! But this was not even close to his only option and Katie is right to point out the downsides.
I don't disagree there are downsides. I just think they are worth it. For someone addicted to Twitter, it may not be so simple to just .. not tweet and turn off notifications.
That’s completely fair, if this is what Jesse actually needs, I’m on board.
Giving his password to Katie is win-win because she can change it and lock him out!
0.00000000000000000001
Is the percentage of people who actually go trawling through historical twitter posts looking for links to articles and well thought-out responses to critics.
awww man well at least I'm part of the 0.00000000000000000001% of something I guess?
For an addict, this is not enough. I think him taking the big step is good for him, from how he talks about it. He’s still getting drawn into reading things, though, which is not great. But it’s also not the worst thing.
I agree completely. As long as the account still exists, the possibility remains of getting angry enough at something to log back on and getting trapped again. The only way to be free is to delete your account. If the archive is so important, he should download it, host it somewhere, and give Katie a link.
I think this is a reasonable issue to raise, but not a reason to keep his existing account. He should just park jsingalfeed on that username.
I am very with you. I don’t actually necessarily think the argument to reinstate his account has any validity. What I do think is that Jesse is right, this shit doesn’t matter. Katie would make a good drug dealer.
I both agree with Katie that Jesse's twitter archive shouldn't be deleted because it could stand as a record of how much bad-faith pointless shit he's gotten over the years (and as a testament to his responsibility as a journalist), but I totally agree with Jesse that it isn't true or possibly wouldn't even matter if bad-faith criticizers "got what they wanted" by him leaving twitter because he's basically an outrage-cow to these people--his detractors *obviously* don't really read his work, and will just move on. I think he has a lot of cred and should run with it while he has it.
BTW I skipped back randomly to an old BARpod episode today and not only did it just so happen to appear to be the first Jude Doyle-mentioning one, but it also happened to be one in which Katie mentioned having raised over $50,000 in "reward" money to get Brianna Wu to produce "the receipts" she claimed to have against Jesse, which funds I believe may 2 years later be yet unclaimed? I totally forgot about that. Katie's such a badass.
No, Katie didn't mention that we lose Jesse's responses to other people's bullshit...those are gone too...it's just not the smartest of the options.
But it doesn’t matter. Who fucking cares? Jesse’s responses don’t matter.
I'm sorry if this sounds blunt, but: I honestly lose respect for online writers when I see them get deep into fights on Twitter. Making a statement re: demanding correction of a published falsehood, sure; it sucks, but sometimes you need that public attention to convince an unscrupulous publisher to cave. But chasing down dozens of randos to go CAN YOU BACK UP THAT POINT? AREN'T YOU WRONG? DON'T YOU THINK IT'S CLEAR YOU'RE WRONG? CAN YOU CITE A SOURCE? is embarrassing. No, they can't cite a source. They have no interest in citing a source. Truthiness, not truth, is the point to them. I read a good newsletter post and I think, "This person thinks and speaks seriously and with consideration;" I see that kind of Twitter behavior, which Katie refers to as defending one's reputation, and I think, "Maybe this person is no more serious than the people they're getting into slapfights with."
I say this as someone without a Twitter account. The Twitter drama is free if I want to make an account and go see it for myself. The substantive reporting is what I get form Jesse's newsletter that I can't get on social media. When multiple newsletter posts in a row are entirely based on debunking idiotic quote tweets from unserious people, I get bored and irritated, because I don't really get the Twitter lingo anymore - it changes all the time - and a lot of the people quoted are only considered major figures on Twitter and aren't familiar to me.
I understand sometimes you have to quote a social media post in order to make a point, and I understand that if you're interested in any issue that touches modern journalism you have to put up with some Twitter-centric stories. That's fine! But good long-form writing stands on its own. There are plenty of people actually reading it. You will never change a single Twitter rando's mind, no matter how well you defend yourself. Every victory won on Twitter is hollow.
The problem with Twitter is that there’s no way to win by being right. Like if you disputed something and there was a big community notes battle where the concern was substantively adjudicated and all the people who were doing crazy stuff were noted and paid some repetutational price it would be different. It’s all sound and fury that unfortunately to Katie’s point has an outsized effect on journalists.
I agree with a lot of this, but I see the logical conclusion of this train of thought to be "...therefore, I should just make my twitter write-only", not "...therefore, I should cause the burning of the Library of Alexandria (but for Bussy Singal tweets)".
I was on Twitter for a long time – 2012 to 2020. I took several breaks, a couple more than six months long. There was no combination of settings and no level of Twitter hygiene that could prevent me from using it badly. If I let myself back on for any reason, within a few days, I would be just as addicted as I ever was. there’s no holding yourself to rules like “just don’t reply to people“ when your use of it is that compulsive.
I honestly don’t buy this idea that his Twitter archive is all that important. I don’t actually know how common it is for people to go digging back for good points they saw ages ago. Twitter is of the moment; it trades out its controversies every couple of days. I don’t think Jesse having his archive up on Twitter is going to do any more to convince people of his views or do any good work on the issues that his longer-form writing doesn’t do.
Strongly agree. And I think the idea of needing to “preserve the archive” is just another way to cling to the idea that one day you’ll be vindicated, one day you’ll show them they were wrong. But that won’t happen. Twitter is completely ephemeral except in that old dumb tweets can come back and get you in hot water (maybe not so much for the self-employed). Otherwise it’s ripples on a pool. Nobody will ever look back and care - YOU will not look back and care, because life is too short.
The articles, the episodes, they have some lasting value. The twitter slapfights mean nothing.
I am such a Twitter addict and it's really not good for me, and hearing those of you wiser than myself talking about getting away from it... are inspiring.
But, oh, am I weak.
Honestly, when I quit it had nothing to do with willpower. There just kept coming points where it was making me so actively miserable, quitting was easy. When whatever else was making me sad and angry had passed, I'd come back, and it would be fine until something else made me sad and angry and it became so miserable I left again. Finally at some point I was sufficiently sad and angry, and Twitter was making me sufficiently miserable, that I nuked the account one day to the next - no announcement - and felt no desire whatsoever to reinstate when 30 days were up.
The most startling thing was that not a single friend whose woke-posting had been driving me to despair noticed I had left. I left Instagram at the same time, and no difference - not a single person noticed the void my posts had left, and in fact no one knew I was gone until I mentioned it offhand an entire year later. I don't think this is an indictment of my friends (who obviously didn't forget I existed IRL), I think it shows how meager the "social" aspect of Twitter actually is for a lot of people.
It's crazy how well your first paragraph describes my experience with alcohol!
You get an immediate boost to a general sense of well being within days after eliminating the social media cesspool in your life.
Jesse did it right. Just delete the apps, delete the accounts, and give it a week.
You'll be like "woh. what a dumpster fire. I feel great."
Same. It's really hard to engage responsibly, I just had to delete my account in the end and walk away.
Yeah this is the exact journey of an addict. I’ve been there but with actual drugs. That’s why I think Jesse’s choice is right. The journey to quitting involves a bunch of relapses and some of those were when you were ready to quit for a little bit but you justified certain use cases because you didn’t have enough experience yet to realize that you were giving yourself a path back. I’m honestly concerned that he’s still reading some Twitter. Twitter is not meth, but it is a dopamine effect, and meth is also an admittedly more intense dopamine effect. I hope that the outs he’s leaving himself (reading Twitter; the supposedly automated Twitter account for advertising his posts) don’t end with him back on Twitter, because I think Twitter is really bad for him. I am worried they’re going to end up with him back on Twitter, however.
Yeah, I know for my part it would end with me back on Twitter. One of the best Twitter features ever was the one that would lock you out of continuing to read if you weren't logged into an account after looking at a small number of tweets per day. I'm at the point where I look at people's feeds very rarely and have no temptation to make an account at all anymore, but that feature stopped me from going back constantly after my account was nuked "just to see what people are saying."
Eventually, if you do that, you will see something you HAVE to respond to, it's just too awful, it's too wrong, it's too funny, it's too important, and then it's like... well, I have to be back for the entirety of the aftermath, I have to see this through to its conclusion, I have to know how the argument ends. But the scroll is infinite, the argument never ends, and there will be something equally awful/wrong/funny/important every 48 hours or so thereafter for as long as you keep looking.
JESSE. Give her the keys. Give Katie the keys. She’s right. Stay away for your own mental health; take time to reboot your brain. But don’t let the bastards think you’ve quit.
NOOO! Jesse. Do NOT give her the keys!!!
You don't make your pusher your sobriety buddy.
For ONCE everything you said made perfect sense. Twitter is a cesspool you don't need to drown in. Shake it off and walk away.
It seems the best solution is setting the recovery email to Katie's wife's email address.
Or Katie's racist neighbor's email address, if he has one.
Write down the password and keep it in Katie’s wife’s wallet.
Nice.
This is clearly the correct answer.
If it’s not Katie it’s not as funny.
Because she would constantly pretend she was about to abuse it.
Katie being secretly wholesome is my favorite meme of the podcast.
My gf and I often break out into 🥺 faces when they're bantering because it's so clear they care about each other very deeply. Gayyyy.
I voted give Katie the keys because I think Jesse can get to a point where he knows his account exists and he won't be tempted to return to it. I think he will get there pretty soon. Like a week or two.
Jesse’s account doesn’t matter. None of his replies matter. None of the Twitter shit matters. So what Jesse should do is what matters for his mental health.
As a smaller content creator who makes content about trans issues, I have dozens of Jesse's tweets bookmarked - his Twitter is an extremely useful resource! It was quite annoying when he deleted his old Tweets, and now that his account is gone, I can't even access the ones that remain. Please give Katie the keys!
If you start writing on your Substack, I'd be interested in knowing.
Thank you! That's very kind. I want to work on improvement my content quality before I start actively promoting my content, but I hope to revamp my Substack soon!
That’s your problem. What’s best for Jesse?
Indeed - Jesse has no obligation to keep his Twitter up. I just think it would be nice if he did! I suppose I'm having trouble seeing how it would be to his detriment to have the account up but with Katie (or whomever) holding the keys. He's just one of the best journalist on the topic of trans issues, and it's often useful to have links to the articles/studies he mentions. Ultimately, it is a minor thing though, so if he truly doesn't think it's in his best interest, I will survive without his tweets :)
"As a thinker", I wonder why you don't see this as a golden opportunity to produce original research and present arguments of your own? Fill the void he leaves behind with that "content" you "create".
Or do a Trading Places, with Jesse and Michael Hobbes swapping keys.
It. Doesn’t. Matter. His responses don’t matter. His Twitter history doesn’t matter. Let it go.
That's not what Katie was proposing. Her idea is to restore his tweets to visibility and dampen the jubilation of the people who think they drove him off Twitter (and into the pen). She wouldn't be tweeting in his name - she's too busy sharing delicious TikTok cooking tips https://twitter.com/kittypurrzog/status/1637665791482142721?s=20
Letting him back in at some future date when he's thoroughly detoxed, I suppose. Caitlin Flanagan does something like this when she feels like she's getting too sucked into Twitter, except she hands the keys to one of her sons.
Flanagan's Atlantic essay re her Twitter addiction was hilarious!
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/twitter-addict-realizes-she-needs-rehab/619343/
I think the point would be to set it up so he *can’t* get back in whenever he wants. The point of deleting his account is to keep from being tempted to go back on there. Katie wants his tweets to stay up, so she’s saying he should not delete the account and instead keep himself from going back on there by giving her control over access to it. So presumably she’d get the password and the recovery email would be changed to hers. Similar to giving your car keys to a friend when drinking.
FWIW, I think this is unnecessary and puts them both in a weird position if he later demands she give the keys back, so I think he should just delete it.
“I violated a hippo” already dying
'Hippo' is Greek for 'horse' so Jesse is, indeed, a hippo violator.
There's a shirt idea here.
Cartoon hippo in hand with a thick HIPAA doc, pages falling out, just the acronym titling the front page and scribble for the rest.
Maybe something, "It's against HIPPA!"
We need merch from the Deep Lore so we don’t make ourselves targets at work or look like perverts in public. We are all middle aged!
I'd go with 'I violate Hippo statues!' It'd be dicey. Some would worry it'd give other people the wrong idea about them, others would worry it'd give people the right idea about them.
YES.
Even in this heterodox group will nobody ask if the HIPPO was asking for it? Maybe they were sending out the vibes that they wanted it. Come on, are we reactionary neo-cons or radfems, make up your minds!
Jesse: Katie's right about the "unforced error." Your tweet ARCHIVE is so important, because it shows you tearing down all the ridiculous, spurious accusations leveled at you over the years. (Also you have created a lot of great threads that aren't just responding to the BS from your adversaries!)
You don't have to ever tweet again, but those previous tweets speak for themselves.
The archive still exists...right?!?
The archive is not important! These arguments that you want to back up are not important. How Jesse feels is important. It’s not about you.
IIRC Twitter used to keep your archive for a month after you delete, so (if that's still true) Jesse has plenty of time to change his mind or give the keys to someone responsible. And yeah, I'm with Katie in not wanting to see the tweets gone forever.
This episode has a real “mommy and daddy are fighting” vibe at times and as weird as it sounds, I’m kind of enjoying it.
LOL we are all deranged.
But who’s who?
Katie is definitely the cool parent, which is traditionally dad.
As a people pleaser it made me uncomfortable but it was also like the proverbial car crash I couldn't avert my gaze from.
Agreed, it’s not often we get to hear Jesse and Katie arguing. Good stuff
I kind of liked it and then at some point got really uncomfortable.
I just made the connection that the same Alejandra Carabello who started the "Jesse left Twitter in shame because of HIPAA violations and also because he didn't get a meme" discourse also started the "Greta Thunberg's amazing Twitter dunk got Andrew Tate arrested" story.
Carabello is unequivocally someone you should never expect accurate information from. Reminds me of John Mulaney's great bit about the NYPost:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY5gvKd_2iA
"It's like someone read a better newspaper and now they're trying to text you everything they can remember. Doesn’t have to be right, just has to be short."
And got dunked on by a congresswoman
Remember it's not disinformation if it benefits your political cause.
It is disinformation if it benefits your opponents' political causes.
She was great in Best Years of Our Lives.
I have not seen Best Years of Out Lives. I probably should watch it sometime soon. I really loves her in the Thin Man movies.
Isn't Carabello also a *self-styled* "disinformation expert"? Like, that's not her job or anything, she just tweets about it.
Jesse, the fact that you call making love “bang out” tells me you’re not ready for it.
I laughed at that! My husband says "bang out" and it's hilarious.
Give Lex the keys!
More seriously: Katie's completely right on this one. Jesse deleting his account is bad both because the morons can use it to declare victory and his useful archive of tweets is lost.
Don't be silly. Nobody even knows know this mysterious Lex is. For all we know he/she/they could be a serial murderer or worse, a podcaster aide.
1. As a non-LDS Christian, I agree with the positive stereotype that Latter-Day Saints are nicer than we are. (We cradle Presbyterians, in contrast, are better known for telling all the other Christians—including the other Presbyterians—why they're wrong about Christianity.) One of my best friends, who was a committed LDS member for the first half of our friendship and has since left the faith, used to invite me ever so nicely to her church and now invites me ever so nicely to Sunday brunch. I've never been able to go because I spend Sunday mornings getting religion with the other cranky Christians in my own tradition, but I can see that my friend was/is way nicer than me in both her mid- and post-faith phases, and I try to emulate her. I was also impressed by the thoughtfulness of our LDS commenter who posted here explaining garments last week.
2. I've always been #TeamJesseStayOffTwitter. You can't win an argument about the facts with people who don't care about the facts. As Katie points out, these people won't even click through to Jesse's articles. They'll never care to learn what he's actually written, and his tweeting back at them won't change that, because they just want to win on Twitter rather than log off to become more informed by reading elsewhere. Jesse's established enough in his career to make a living outside Twitter, so more power to him.
Boy, they’re not nicer. They’re nicer on the outside. They’re deeply cruel on the inside. This is a church that, when one parent decides to step away from the religion, will encourage divorce because the family can’t go to the celestial kingdom together otherwise. It’s gross. The niceness is skin deep.
I mean I hear what you’re saying about how it can affect people when they leave the faith, because the niceness has been socialized. But most don’t leave the faith. I don’t think Mormons are especially bad in this regard (and I don’t give a fuck that they want to be called LDS; lipstick on a pig), but the niceness is a facade.
Actually, it depends on the individual bishop and spouse. (I know because this came up when my friend and some of her siblings left the faith. They ultimately all stayed married, but it was a source of stress initially.)
That is very different from what would happen in my tradition if my spouse or I left (we don't consider leaving the faith a justification for divorce), and I'm not going to defend it. But it's also pretty darn common for forms of religion with high levels of observance to put a lot of pressure on people to marry and raise their kids in the faith. I consider the LDS practices here to be a variation on a theme, rather than an anomaly.
No I agree, Mormonism is not any worse than any other religion. I criticize it, especially as a former member, but I don’t think it’s especially bad. You say that it depends on the individual bishop and spouse, and you’re probably right. I’ve never seen a situation in which the church didn’t push for a divorce. Perhaps you have. There’s strong theological justification for them to do so. Again, this is no better or worse, but my point is that the niceness of the church is skin deep. It’s a facade.
Mormons: “We have to be super good to get into heaven!”
Presbyterians: “lol, you idiot, don’t you know the good news about how you’re Totally Depraved™️ and Saved by Grace™️? BE AS AWFUL AS YOU WANT”
As non LDS, I just object to them saying "other Christians" as if Mormons are Christians. I emphatically insist that they are not.
1. I think most people who've heard of these religions understand that both Nicene Christians and the LDS consider their belief systems to be mutually exclusive. For those who don't understand that, well, it just takes a few minutes of reading or conversation to find out.
2. I don't really have a problem with researchers putting the LDS in their "other Christian traditions" bucket when they do or cite surveys. That's just respecting how people identify without necessarily endorsing a particular theology, much as historians do when they talk about ancient Arian Christians. The alternative would be for researchers to become the arbiters of who is "really" Christian. As somebody who knows enough academics to be familiar with the median professor's feelings about evangelicals, Catholics, and Pentecostals, I would rather than we went with self-ID in public discussions and let people hash out who's a heretic in intra-church contexts.
What is a Shibboleth for than this exact instance? We just need to have that be part of a survey, like "is Jesus God or just a brother of Satan?" and then we can root out the fakes
I believe the common understanding of Christian is any faith that believes that Christ is the son of god and base their beliefs on his teachings.
Mormon's fall very squarely in that category. There are lots of modern Christian sects that reject the "authenticity" of other Christian sects. . . . . it's kind of the whole reason we have different sects.
To most thinking of them as different is as baseless as trying to reject some sects of Buddhism as "more buddhist" or "true buddhism" compared to others.
Mormons don't believe Jesus is God, they think he's Satan's brother. They also think we attain the same status as Jesus when we die.
Very VERY far off the mark. Much more than a denominational split over the gifts of the Spirit or women in ministry.
I think of Mormonism as kind of a blurry JPEG of Christianity.
Mormonism is Christianity fan fiction that took on a life of its own...like Fifty Shades of Grey is to Twilight.
My unsolicited, para-social take:
TL;DR
Jesse leaving twitter: Good
Jesse deactivating his account: bad
Jesse still checking twitter during his break: very bad.
Giving Katie the keys: even worse.
Jesse very clearly has a bad relationship with twitter where, him as a honest and ethical person doesn't stand a chance against people who don't care about either of those things. This isn't cowardice or backing down from the fight, this is choosing to not enter a word fight when you know your opponent is using their fists. If they aren't going to follow logical arguments and discussion and instead continue to mudsling, there's little to be gained to continue to argue. There's an argument that the non-replying lurkers will become informed, but the negative affect on Jesse's mental health isn't worth the trade-off.
Deleting the account is a bad idea. I said this before when he first talked about purging old tweets, removing history only gives others the change to make up their own. Even if Jesse (rightly) doesn't want to engage with these fools, not having the easy-to-showcase historical tweets makes anyone having that argument on their behalf that much harder. I know Jesse has stated bluntly to not fight on his behalf, but it's inevitable for him and his work to come up in these discussions about GAC and without easy access to his tweet 'database', anyone looking to use his educated and informed takes comes up blank.
While I support giving someone the keys to the account as a better way to break the addiction, I don't think it should be Katie - not because I don't trust her to protect it, but having a co-host bear the burden will only need to unnecessary drama down the line if/when Jesse wants account access back. There's an argument to be made that having to grovel to Katie for access back to the account is a great deterrent, with Katie's penchant for mockery, but I just see it as a pain point that could potentially negatively affect things.
I do agree with Katie that twitter reputation is more important than it may seem. Yes, the streets of twitter are filled with lunacy, but anyone uninformed trying to get a read on someone/something is going to use it as a resource.
Hypothetically, someone new to this debate reads something by/about Jesse. They decide to dig into him to see if he's reliable. The first 3 google results is his Wikipedia, his personal website, and then his substack. While wikipedia is 'unbiased' it's not going to give you a read on his day-to-day and his self-published outfits will obviously paint him favorley.
The fourth link is the GLADD link. Someone reads that and, due to the gish gallop that the article is, they follow the links to twitter, maybe even searching for his name. All they will find is he used to have an account and the top rated/liked posts on the subjects are all about how he got a joke wrong and was, in their minds, rightly bullied off the platform.
When you remove your whole archive, anyone new to learn about Jesse will be mostly met with lies. While you can't ever convince the liars of the truth (because they don't care), having your twitter archive greatly aids in uninformed source becoming more informed on your actual self instead of the caricature painted by these bad faith twitter goons.
Reactivate the twitter, make it your bio that "I only respond to tweets on premium episodes of my podcast" and then follow through on that. They want the responses to their takes, make them pay, and stay stress free never feeling the need to respond to these people. Considering most of these people don't even have $5, they'll never know if you responded anyways :)
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Good points. He should give the keys to his brother.
100% agree. Reactivate the account to save the archive. Make the statement in the bio. Hire someone to post your articles, or set up something (like zapier) to post articles without logging in. Make Twitter a one-way flow of putting stuff out there and do not interact at all. At all.
To me, that’s the best option. We keep the archive, Jesse doesn’t directly interact with Twitter *at all* anymore.
And Jesse, stop lurking on Twitter. Your dramatic exit says that you *know* you need to go cold turkey… so do it. I’m really looking forward to your post Twitter-brain content. Do not even peep at the crazies. You’ve got this.
100%, irrefutable best take on the matter.
I agree that would probably be the best option that would get him off twitter without creating the impression he'd been run off. BUT, do we think Jessie is capable of having a Twitter account and not using it? Or will he think "I'm sure it will be fine if I just have *one*" only to wake up six hours hours later with no recollection of events, a dozen unanswered messages from Katie and a suspiciously sore ass (figuratively speaking).
He is. Of course he is. (If he stops lurking.)
Best take I’ve seen.
This is what I was thinking too.
I just stopped the ep to come say that Jesse, you should give her the keys. I’ve never posted anything here before because I’m embarrassed to even be associated w such a felonious, horse-and-hippo violating podcast, but this issue is too important for me to stay silent any longer.
*give her the keys*...*give her the keys*...*give her the keys*...
LOLing from the first 30 seconds. This is art.
My husband says Jesse should put his Twitter account into a trust, but I come from the poors, so I don't know what that means.
It means when they produce an adorable new baby podcast it will take the Twitter keys.
Prison food must be much worse than he’s letting on if Jesse put Manischewitz in the “pro” column for Jewish heaven.