Elon Musk has made himself Twitter’s main character — to the detriment of the platform

In 2019, a Twitter user called @maplecocaine captured an important truth about the platform.

“Each day on Twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it,” they tweeted.

For those not familiar with the platform, being the “one main character” describes the moment when a Twitter user goes viral for the wrong reasons — typically for tweeting something ill-advised.

There are some people who revel in this attention. One example is MAGA-touting Nick Adams, who has been making a concerted effort recently to tweet troll statements — “The Los Angeles Lakers are better WITHOUT LeBron James in the lineup, this is a fact” was a recent egregious one — so that the people making fun of him will share his content further. (Believe it or not, the Trump-supporting, America-loving, Hooters-adoring buffoon is a former young Liberal who boasted about being the youngest deputy mayor in Australia and proposed killing all pigeons in his council area.)

Another is Elon Musk. His purchase of Twitter has gone poorly so far. He fired thousands of employees, before asking some to come back. He gave the remaining staff an ultimatum between committing to “hardcore” Twitter or leaving, and then later walked back some of his demands. New features rolled out then rolled back. The platform itself is increasingly glitchy. Advertisers have fled in droves.

It has made Musk into Twitter’s permanent main character, which, in my opinion, has always been his motivation for buying it. Much like a certain former US president, the world’s richest man routinely announces decisions or thrashes out ideas about the platform on the platform.

Other people use Twitter to dunk on him for his many follies. Journalists are using Twitter to livetweet the platform falling apart. It’s all very meta.

Like Trump before him, Musk knows that being at the centre of Twitter is a shortcut to being at the centre of culture.

Despite only having a few hundred million users — fewer than Pinterest! — the platform’s concentration of public figures and media means it drives the world’s attention even if the majority of the world isn’t on there.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has used the platform to help cultivate the mythos of him as a genius visionary memelord. Now, Musk’s Twitter purchase means his place on Twitter is untouchable, he can mould his favourite platform to his liking, and it cements him as seemingly the only topic of discussion on the website.

Musk may yet turn Twitter around, but all evidence so far suggests that’s unlikely. It’s fitting that a monster of Twitter’s own creation would be responsible for the company’s possible demise. Part of the seductive power of Twitter is it entices people to weigh in on every topic beyond their expertise. But unlike most of us, a multibillionaire can decide to turn their tweets of how to “fix Twitter” into reality.

This article was first published by Crikey.