Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
Now that Twitter is in the hands of Elon Musk, many people are horrified. Because on the one hand they like Twitter, but not Elon Musk. And they dread what the hands of someone like Elon Musk can do to Twitter.
Personally, I’m very relaxed about it. I’m not a friend of Elon Musk, not even on Facebook. But I don’t think even a dark genius could think of much to make Twitter any worse than it already is.
For me it is a machine that manages to transform reasonably reasonable and open-minded people into obtrusive permanent mine, pointers and contraries within a few weeks. Anyone who is on Twitter, as they say, quickly succumbs to the illusion that what’s on your mind, how you look at the world and how you assess things, absolutely must be expressed, and always.
You don’t then believe that your own opinion is exclusive or extravagant – no, everyone has to know it, because what you know, you know better. In addition, Twitter apparently also encourages people to comment on posts by people they are not friends with without any context.
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Ultimately, it leads to the view that everything one says is correct and everything that does not happen in one’s own interest is great nonsense. A huge, alien mistake, uttered by people who only have the worst intentions – for whatever reason.
More columns by Tillmann Prüfer
Anyone who uses Twitter will soon feel offended. Because the world has already been told how to turn it around and it still doesn’t do it. And because of that, the tweeter just keeps getting angrier and angrier and angrier. I think of the ideal twitterer as someone you definitely don’t want to meet at a party. A person like Elon Musk.
Do you actually know if Elon Musk was like this before? Or only since he started using Twitter? Of course, this is a very gross oversimplification. It’s also true that a lot of “wonderful” things happen on Twitter. That people find each other there, people who have not found a platform elsewhere have their say. A poetry of its own was created there.
I believe there are many coherent truths that are not mutually exclusive. That’s probably because I haven’t published enough on Twitter yet. Many are now threatening to unsubscribe from Twitter. Saskia Esken from the SPD has already done it. I hope that doesn’t make a school. Surely all the Twitter users would then register somewhere else. At least you still know which parties they go to and you can avoid them. As I have been doing with Elon Musk for a long time, by the way.
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