The Auron MacIntyre Show - August 24, 2023


How to Think About Twitter ｜ 8⧸24⧸23


Episode Stats

Length

46 minutes

Words per Minute

190.03407

Word Count

8,849

Sentence Count

501

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary

In this episode, I talk about how to get good at using the social media platform, why it's important to understand what it is, and what it's not, and how it can help you improve your skills at using it.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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00:00:17.800 It's kind of like, I'm already on vacation.
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00:00:28.580 See AirCanada.com.
00:00:30.000 Hey guys, so I thought it was time to make a video about Twitter itself.
00:00:41.860 It's something that I kind of accidentally got decent at.
00:00:45.380 It's something that I didn't set out to be good at, to have a big following on,
00:00:49.860 but that just kind of happened.
00:00:51.660 Originally, I was making YouTube videos, and I thought that, you know,
00:00:55.440 YouTube, I need to get the word out because I'm not getting a lot of traffic right away.
00:00:59.520 What's the best way to do that?
00:01:00.760 And people told me, oh, you should go on Twitter.
00:01:02.580 That's a great place to share your content.
00:01:04.700 So that's why I ended up creating a Twitter account.
00:01:06.980 It was not originally my intention to have any kind of serious platform or footprint over there.
00:01:13.040 But that's kind of the way things have gone.
00:01:15.260 That's where most people now find my work.
00:01:17.300 Obviously, you're watching this on YouTube or listening on the podcast or on Blaze TV,
00:01:21.600 and so you know about the long-form content.
00:01:24.840 But a lot of people first interact with my Twitter, and then they kind of move to one of those other platforms.
00:01:31.560 So Twitter is kind of where a lot of my base started.
00:01:34.580 And so that's interesting because I end up going on these podcasts or I get interviewed by people,
00:01:40.060 and they ask me, oh, how should we be using Twitter?
00:01:42.300 How should we understand Twitter?
00:01:44.260 What's something that people don't get about Twitter?
00:01:45.960 How do you get good at Twitter?
00:01:47.340 And these are all things I've talked about multiple times with different interviewers,
00:01:51.240 but it's all scattered on different guest appearances and that kind of thing.
00:01:54.640 So I thought it would be good to have a discussion on the channel here in one focused video
00:01:59.200 because I don't just want to talk about what Twitter is or how you can get good at it,
00:02:03.240 though I am going to talk about those things.
00:02:04.900 But I also want to talk about changes that are happening.
00:02:07.680 Obviously, we know that Elon Musk is taking the platform in a different direction.
00:02:11.380 He's even technically renamed it, though I refuse to call it X.
00:02:14.540 I'm sorry.
00:02:15.400 Maybe someday I'll catch up with that change, but so far it's still Twitter to me.
00:02:19.880 But I do want to talk about the direction he's taking it because there are big changes on the horizon.
00:02:24.120 I think he's changing some serious parts of Twitter.
00:02:26.740 They're going to alter the way that you can use it and the way you can be successful at it
00:02:29.720 and what the platform even is for a lot of people.
00:02:32.580 And so I want to talk about all that in today's video.
00:02:35.420 But first, let's go ahead and start at the beginning.
00:02:38.340 So what is Twitter?
00:02:39.920 What sets it apart from other social media platforms?
00:02:44.780 That's the thing that you need to think about, right?
00:02:46.860 The social media platform, what makes it important is what it's not.
00:02:51.080 The key to a social media platform is what it's not, right?
00:02:54.860 You don't want every social media platform to do the exact same thing or they all just blend together.
00:03:00.220 We've seen a lot of Twitter clones or Facebook clones or Instagram clones,
00:03:05.960 people just taking the same idea and slapping a different coat of paint on it
00:03:10.200 and calling it a new social media platform, or they try to meld too many aspects of all the different platforms
00:03:16.880 and just swirl them together.
00:03:18.600 And that just gets you nowhere.
00:03:19.760 It's not distinct.
00:03:20.900 It doesn't give people a reason to use the platform.
00:03:24.060 So Twitter has a couple things that make it very different from other social media platforms
00:03:28.840 that allows it to stand out.
00:03:31.040 The first thing really is the user base.
00:03:35.020 The Twitter user base is smaller than most social media platforms.
00:03:39.760 It's very minuscule compared to some of the bigger competitors.
00:03:43.680 However, the key to Twitter is that it captures the right type of people.
00:03:49.000 Twitter is a platform that lends itself due to its limited character aspect.
00:03:54.240 It used to be much shorter, but now it's like 256 or whatever.
00:03:57.840 And I guess now that you can subscribe, you can make it much longer,
00:04:01.180 which is its own discussion about the problems that we'll talk about here in a second
00:04:05.100 where Twitter is going to lose its distinction.
00:04:07.920 But early on, Twitter lent itself to a very particular type of word cell, basically.
00:04:13.300 The kind of person who is good at delivering messages, setting frames,
00:04:19.620 using their high linguistic IQ to kind of bring that to the platform.
00:04:24.880 And so the way that Twitter was shaped, the way that it presented itself,
00:04:29.160 it's self-selected for a particular group that would be successful, that would enjoy it.
00:04:34.560 And it was mainly the kind of people who are cultural movers and shakers.
00:04:39.620 Journalists, media types, those that wrote film or television.
00:04:43.540 It attracted the kind of people who shaped a lot of public opinion.
00:04:49.700 A lot of media, a lot of academia, a lot of celebrities kind of flocked to the platform.
00:04:56.060 And so it created a situation where there are a lot of highly influential people
00:05:01.800 who really regularly were interacting with each other.
00:05:05.100 So when you were on Twitter, you could go directly to the celebrity.
00:05:10.240 You could go directly to the thought leader.
00:05:13.020 You could dunk on the professor.
00:05:15.420 You could make jokes with the comedian.
00:05:18.480 You know, these were all things that you could directly interact with these people.
00:05:22.100 And that's the other big aspect is, in many ways, Twitter has this,
00:05:25.900 the common man can brush up against the celebrity or the influential person aspect to it, right?
00:05:32.200 You can talk to somebody famous.
00:05:34.640 You can influence somebody's opinion who might hold a large amount of sway.
00:05:39.420 You can challenge somebody who holds, you know, a New York Times column or something like that.
00:05:46.200 You can directly interact with, you know, famous people, with opinion shapers.
00:05:51.940 There's this, the average person gets to walk in and kind of interact with these people thing
00:05:56.840 that really sells the platform and sets it apart.
00:06:00.080 Another big thing about Twitter is really the fact that it allows for anonymity.
00:06:06.160 At least it did.
00:06:07.220 Obviously, that might also be something that's going to change, but we'll get to that in a second.
00:06:11.780 But the anonymity aspect of Twitter allows a lot of people who otherwise would have their voices silenced
00:06:18.600 in many countries where they're directly oppressed by their governments
00:06:22.820 or in ones like the United States, where there's not technically legal repercussions all the time.
00:06:29.240 Though, ask Douglas Mackey about that.
00:06:31.400 Anonymous accounts still allow people who would be afraid of getting fired from their job
00:06:35.580 or having their lives destroyed due to political correctness.
00:06:38.860 They can, again, get in there, mix it up, have opinions, have thoughts, and they can express them in a way.
00:06:45.440 Now, a lot of people don't like that aspect of it.
00:06:47.640 People like Jordan Peterson famously got very angry about the fact that people have anonymous accounts on Twitter.
00:06:53.880 But I think it's really essential.
00:06:55.500 I think it allows ideas to flow in a way that they wouldn't anywhere else.
00:06:59.720 You regularly see, again, very large accounts interact with people that they otherwise would never interact with
00:07:05.820 because of this situation.
00:07:07.500 And I think that creates a conversation that just doesn't exist anywhere.
00:07:11.420 It's a dynamic that just doesn't exist anywhere else, which is really interesting.
00:07:16.140 You have plenty of platforms that allow you to just be really anonymous.
00:07:19.920 But you don't have a lot of famous people.
00:07:22.640 You don't have world leaders.
00:07:23.860 You don't have big journalists and movie stars and stuff show up to those places.
00:07:27.600 And you have plenty of places where there's those kind of accounts.
00:07:31.380 Facebook is full of all these accounts from different media empires, different celebrities, government officials, those kind of things.
00:07:40.320 But they rarely really interact with the people there.
00:07:43.800 And then you still have to kind of use your real name on Facebook.
00:07:46.180 And so they definitely don't get the hardest kind of challenges because there's not this interaction between kind of anonymous people
00:07:54.120 who are really able to speak their mind and these really powerful people or people in a lot of influence
00:08:00.120 who actually personally run their account.
00:08:02.560 Of course, there are plenty of people who just have corporate proxy stand-ins.
00:08:07.100 Obviously, Joe Biden's not running his Twitter account.
00:08:09.960 Obviously, that's very clear.
00:08:12.280 But you get people like Donald Trump, right, who really do run their account.
00:08:15.900 That's a real thing.
00:08:17.360 And you can see this because so many celebrities flip out and burn out and post crazy and outrageous things
00:08:24.060 and end up getting themselves in trouble.
00:08:26.660 So you know it's real.
00:08:27.540 Like for whatever reason, whether this is a good or a bad thing, Twitter drives people, even famous people,
00:08:33.260 and even influential people to post for themselves instead of allowing kind of some safe corporate handler to do it for them.
00:08:40.660 Again, not everybody.
00:08:41.480 There's obviously people who have proxies running their accounts for them.
00:08:45.520 But there's a much higher percentage of real person interaction on Twitter than you get kind of with other platforms.
00:08:54.280 Universities today aren't just neglecting real education.
00:08:57.160 They're actively undermining it.
00:08:58.680 And we can't let them get away with it.
00:09:00.360 America was made for an educated and engaged citizenry.
00:09:03.120 The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is here to help.
00:09:06.720 ISI offers programs and opportunities for conservative students across the country.
00:09:11.900 ISI understands that conservatives and right-of-center students feel isolated on college campuses
00:09:16.980 and that you're often fighting for your own reputation, dignity, and future.
00:09:21.880 Through ISI, you can learn about what Russell Kirk called the permanent things,
00:09:25.680 the philosophical and political teachings that shaped and made Western civilization great.
00:09:30.620 ISI offers many opportunities to jumpstart your career.
00:09:34.120 They have fellowships at some of the nation's top conservative publications like National Review,
00:09:38.460 The American Conservative, and The College Thinker.
00:09:41.200 If you're a graduate student, ISI offers funding opportunities to sponsor the next great generation of college professors.
00:09:47.220 Through ISI, you can work with conservative thinkers who are making a difference.
00:09:51.120 Thinkers like Chris Ruffo, who currently has an ISI researcher helping him with his book.
00:09:55.880 But perhaps most importantly, ISI offers college students a community of people
00:10:00.100 that can help them grow.
00:10:01.600 If you're a college student, ISI can help you start a student organization or student newspaper
00:10:06.340 or meet other like-minded students at their various conferences and events.
00:10:11.060 ISI is here to educate the next generation of great Americans.
00:10:14.580 To learn more, go to ISI.org.
00:10:17.520 That's ISI.org.
00:10:19.520 So that brings us to the other thing about Twitter,
00:10:22.080 which is Twitter is, in many ways, a blood sport.
00:10:27.340 Again, this might not be the best aspect of humanity on display here,
00:10:32.640 but it is just something that's true about Twitter.
00:10:35.860 There's obviously many different corners of Twitter.
00:10:38.360 Not everybody's on there for the politics.
00:10:40.280 Not everybody is on there for the gossip or the drama.
00:10:43.640 However, Twitter is the kind of place where this stuff spreads quickly and in public.
00:10:48.500 And so there's always this kind of live combat aspect to it.
00:10:54.140 It's like watching a race, right?
00:10:56.280 You're technically watching the race for the Daytona 500 or the Indy cars or whatever.
00:11:02.600 You're supposed to be watching it for the fact that you want your favorite guy to win.
00:11:07.420 You want to see the exciting changes in position and passing
00:11:12.100 and see who can make it in and out of the pit the fastest.
00:11:14.500 But let's be honest, we all know that to some degree everybody's watching
00:11:18.680 because there might be a car crash.
00:11:20.760 Like something might explode.
00:11:22.220 Somebody might die.
00:11:23.440 Like something horrific might happen.
00:11:25.260 And as much as we don't want to admit to ourselves
00:11:27.180 that that's part of the reason you're watching the race,
00:11:29.920 it is a reason you're watching the race.
00:11:31.900 And this is also true of Twitter.
00:11:33.860 There is this feeling of like everybody's playing with live ammo
00:11:36.580 and at any moment someone could just blow themselves up, right?
00:11:40.540 Someone might just destroy their presidential campaign or destroy their career
00:11:45.920 or become an internet celebrity overnight.
00:11:48.820 And this has ruined many people's lives.
00:11:51.100 It's also made many people rich.
00:11:53.120 It's made many people famous.
00:11:54.840 So there's this very real sense of going viral
00:11:59.460 that can happen for the good or the ill and can happen at any time.
00:12:03.700 And even though you might be in one little corner of Twitter,
00:12:07.120 maybe you might be focused on one kind of specific subject
00:12:10.680 that you're in in Twitter
00:12:12.420 and only a few people follow you in that area,
00:12:14.660 all of a sudden you could post one thing
00:12:17.040 and it could be amazing and a big post,
00:12:19.140 a big account could share it
00:12:20.480 and another big account could share it.
00:12:22.020 And all of a sudden there are millions of views
00:12:24.160 on an account that maybe had 300 followers out of nowhere
00:12:27.540 because of this very viral nature.
00:12:30.240 And so, you know, in many ways Twitter is successful
00:12:33.940 because of the crowd it attracts
00:12:35.780 and the format it has, its viral nature
00:12:39.280 and the fact that it really does allow finally
00:12:42.200 for kind of this inter-faction combat.
00:12:46.880 Twitter is not an echo chamber.
00:12:48.720 So like I said, there's plenty of other sites
00:12:50.740 that have attempted to rip off Twitter.
00:12:52.600 You've had, you know, these different social media proxies.
00:12:57.820 You had, I think, Mastodon was the liberal one all
00:13:00.600 the journalists were trying to flock to.
00:13:03.160 And then of course you have right-wing variants
00:13:05.300 like Gab and things and they all have their merits.
00:13:07.880 I'm not trying to bash anybody.
00:13:09.760 I use Gab as kind of my secondary, you know,
00:13:12.940 backup social media, Twitter proxy.
00:13:16.740 These things exist.
00:13:18.360 However, they tend to be echo chambers, right?
00:13:20.740 There's not a lot of cross-faction contact.
00:13:23.760 As we're in Twitter, because again, it's this public square.
00:13:27.340 It is this hub.
00:13:28.520 Everyone's there.
00:13:29.280 Everyone's interacting.
00:13:30.920 You really do see like the host of a CNN TV show
00:13:34.240 go at it with some, you know, guy with a frog,
00:13:37.840 with a frog in his, in his profile.
00:13:41.720 You know, you'll get people, rappers yelling at,
00:13:44.480 you know, political pundits who are yelling at policemen
00:13:47.920 and government officials.
00:13:48.900 It's just, you know, the left and the right
00:13:51.320 and the libertarians and the communists.
00:13:54.000 They could all just jump on each other any moment.
00:13:56.320 And this kind of constant ability
00:13:59.100 of these different factions, the clash.
00:14:01.320 And, you know, again, it's the coliseum.
00:14:03.020 People show up, they want to see blood.
00:14:04.960 Again, it's not the best part of human nature,
00:14:06.980 but it is there.
00:14:08.800 And if you want to understand the platform,
00:14:10.700 that's something you want to understand about it.
00:14:13.120 So that's what Twitter is.
00:14:15.160 So how can people use Twitter?
00:14:18.160 What are the best ways to use Twitter?
00:14:20.660 What's the best ways to understand it?
00:14:22.320 Well, there's a couple different ways
00:14:24.020 to think about Twitter.
00:14:25.520 Obviously, the first thing is how you want to use it, right?
00:14:28.880 Your goals could be very different.
00:14:31.180 So I can explain to you from my experience
00:14:33.700 and, you know, political punditry,
00:14:35.980 what some things that work for me,
00:14:37.480 but that might not be what works for you
00:14:39.560 if you have an entirely different kind of idea
00:14:43.260 of who you want to be or what you want to do
00:14:45.440 or how you want to present yourself.
00:14:47.040 A lot of people just want to go on Twitter
00:14:48.380 and basically lurk, right?
00:14:50.480 They just want to read the posts.
00:14:52.000 They want to see something from their favorite people.
00:14:53.920 They want to check in on what's going on.
00:14:56.280 And that's fine.
00:14:57.060 Twitter is probably the best news site in the world,
00:15:01.220 not because everything on it is accurate,
00:15:03.920 but because it's unfiltered in many ways.
00:15:06.320 We actually know Twitter is highly filtered
00:15:08.180 by the government,
00:15:09.180 or it was under previous administrations of Twitter,
00:15:12.320 especially from the Twitter files.
00:15:14.840 However, even with all of that censorship,
00:15:17.220 it is still probably the least filtered
00:15:20.540 kind of version of the news
00:15:21.940 because, again, Twitter goes viral.
00:15:24.280 Things explode immediately.
00:15:25.800 And so Twitter can have news stories
00:15:27.520 hours before any major news site has anything on it.
00:15:32.520 They can have, they scoop things all the time.
00:15:34.840 And it's not just being scooped,
00:15:35.940 it's being interacted with repeatedly.
00:15:37.800 It's being iterated on.
00:15:38.860 People are immediately looking for more information.
00:15:42.380 They're doing more research, all of these things.
00:15:44.620 And so Twitter is an excellent just news aggregator.
00:15:48.100 Again, you have to become the filter.
00:15:49.720 You have to learn what to trust,
00:15:51.460 who to trust, what information is reliable.
00:15:54.780 You have to, you can't just go on there
00:15:56.480 and say, well, because it's on Twitter, it's real.
00:15:59.280 But if you just want the raw feed
00:16:01.360 of kind of the matrix, right?
00:16:02.560 You just want to see the ones and zeros going by,
00:16:04.640 and then you make the decision of kind of what is real
00:16:07.520 and what isn't, Twitter's your source.
00:16:09.660 So that really is where this kind of world news mind
00:16:13.080 dumps itself before anything gets filtered
00:16:15.660 through the AP wire and spit back out as propaganda.
00:16:18.400 So if you're just that person
00:16:19.920 and you just want to see some of your favorite content creators
00:16:22.780 or social media people,
00:16:24.420 or you just want to check in on the news, that's fine.
00:16:27.000 That's a great way to use Twitter.
00:16:28.360 And you don't have to do a lot of posting.
00:16:30.700 That's not a big deal.
00:16:32.060 Just enjoy it.
00:16:33.020 However, if you're going to post
00:16:34.680 and you're posting for a particular reason
00:16:38.100 beyond just sharing a few things with a friend
00:16:40.020 or, you know, you've got a small group of internet friends
00:16:42.520 or real life friends
00:16:43.440 and you just want to post things between each other
00:16:45.280 so other people can see it.
00:16:46.840 Again, if that's what you're doing,
00:16:48.420 by all means, that's great.
00:16:49.860 Not everybody needs to try to grow their account.
00:16:52.260 Not everybody needs to try to become big on Twitter.
00:16:54.780 I'm just saying, you know, this advice will not be for you.
00:16:57.520 This will be advice for people who specifically
00:16:59.640 are looking to grow their account
00:17:01.680 and try to kind of get a larger voice on Twitter.
00:17:05.600 So a couple things to think about
00:17:07.940 when you're looking at Twitter.
00:17:09.120 I think there are probably three main types
00:17:12.180 of really successful Twitter accounts.
00:17:14.600 Obviously, if you're LeBron James or Donald Trump,
00:17:17.940 you're going to be, you're just going to be successful
00:17:20.100 because your name is already huge.
00:17:22.220 So that this is not, you don't need any advice from me.
00:17:24.980 You're not coming to watch this video
00:17:26.180 if you're Donald Trump or someone like that
00:17:28.780 who automatically would have a huge audience anyway.
00:17:31.320 But if you're an average person
00:17:32.960 who's trying to grow on Twitter,
00:17:35.360 I think there's kind of three main archetypes
00:17:38.600 of how that happens.
00:17:40.400 So the first one is the meme account.
00:17:43.640 Meme accounts are really easy to do
00:17:46.820 and they're usually easy to get successful with.
00:17:50.640 You can grow a very large meme account very quickly
00:17:53.680 and it's great, especially now that Twitter is monetized,
00:17:57.320 which is again, something we'll address
00:17:58.440 near the end of the video.
00:17:59.680 But now that Twitter is monetized,
00:18:02.080 meme accounts can be incredibly profitable
00:18:04.440 because they're highly shareable.
00:18:06.640 Again, viral nature of Twitter.
00:18:08.480 That's something to always remember about Twitter,
00:18:10.680 the viral nature of it.
00:18:12.240 One of the big mistakes people make,
00:18:14.600 again, is they get on there
00:18:15.620 and they want to type the one big thread, right?
00:18:18.360 They want to get on there
00:18:19.060 and make the big effort post
00:18:20.740 that's going to blow everybody's mind
00:18:22.380 and show how smart they are.
00:18:24.380 And once everybody reads it,
00:18:25.660 they'll finally be recognized
00:18:27.160 as kind of the intellectual luminary that they are.
00:18:30.020 But that's not really what Twitter rewards.
00:18:33.020 Twitter is a visual medium in a lot of ways.
00:18:35.520 It's a quick catch thing.
00:18:36.820 People are scrolling through their feed really quick
00:18:39.680 or they're looking at their phone
00:18:41.740 in between sets at the gym
00:18:42.920 or on the toilet or whatever.
00:18:44.560 Let's be honest, you know you're doing it.
00:18:46.620 And they're not spending a lot of time on each post.
00:18:50.880 So if you just hit people with walls of text all the time,
00:18:53.600 they're not going to pay attention
00:18:54.960 if they don't know who you are.
00:18:56.840 So these effort posts,
00:18:58.100 these high intellectual internet posts,
00:19:00.240 you can do those.
00:19:01.480 However, you usually need an audience of some size
00:19:04.760 before those become successful.
00:19:06.700 So meme accounts are great
00:19:08.280 because they are fantastic for going viral.
00:19:10.780 They're very accessible for most people.
00:19:12.720 They tend to have a good outreach.
00:19:16.520 They're easy to monetize
00:19:17.700 if that's something you're worried about.
00:19:19.020 If you, as long as you're not doing super spicy memes,
00:19:21.560 you know, you usually are very easy to stay monetized.
00:19:24.280 And so you're going to see a higher return
00:19:26.060 if you're a subscriber on Twitter Blue.
00:19:29.380 And so these are all advantages of the meme account.
00:19:32.080 Again, you can see these things, you know, start
00:19:34.620 and they can skyrocket, become very popular very quickly.
00:19:38.440 So if you just want to do a very basic account,
00:19:41.780 you don't want personal notoriety.
00:19:44.500 You just want to,
00:19:45.280 because usually these are anonymous, right?
00:19:47.040 You usually, it's kind of a libs of TikTok thing
00:19:49.540 where eventually you might become a big deal
00:19:52.840 once your account's huge.
00:19:54.400 But for the most part, it's under a pseudonym.
00:19:56.480 It's usually anonymous.
00:19:58.020 And so you kind of can set this up,
00:20:01.720 not have to put your face out there,
00:20:03.060 not have to put your personality out there,
00:20:04.840 get a large imprint, maybe make some money off of it.
00:20:07.900 This is a good way to get things started.
00:20:09.460 Also, if you're just the, even if this isn't your plan,
00:20:12.680 if your plan isn't to become a meme account,
00:20:15.080 posting memes is still a great idea.
00:20:16.940 This is where I really got started.
00:20:18.640 To be honest, I was making memes.
00:20:21.100 And it's great if you can make the memes
00:20:22.200 because then they're original to you.
00:20:24.380 And so if you're posting memes that are original to you
00:20:27.000 and people can recognize that they're not just something
00:20:28.860 that you ripped off a Facebook page somewhere
00:20:31.180 or found on the internet and they've seen it a million times,
00:20:33.520 then they'll start to recognize your account
00:20:35.680 and you'll stand out.
00:20:36.680 But even if you're not a meme account,
00:20:39.080 memes are still a fantastic way,
00:20:40.760 especially if you're the one making the memes
00:20:42.440 to really grow a brand and get noticed.
00:20:45.940 So even if you're not a meme account, mix them in.
00:20:48.980 But just in general, memes are a great way.
00:20:51.560 It's like one of the three pillars of Twitter
00:20:54.180 if you wanna have a successful account.
00:20:56.380 The second way to really structure your account
00:20:58.820 and the second archetype you can have
00:21:00.540 is to focus on a specific topic, a specific subject.
00:21:04.540 So the subject matter expert
00:21:06.860 is somebody who's repeatedly posting on the same thing.
00:21:11.100 So whether it's working out, gardening, politics,
00:21:15.660 video games, whatever it is that you're focused on,
00:21:19.120 if you can keep yourself kind of mostly in that lane,
00:21:22.400 it doesn't have to be every single thing you post,
00:21:24.740 but 75% at least probably needs to be on that topic,
00:21:28.700 maybe even higher,
00:21:29.500 so that you're consistently providing something
00:21:32.720 that people want to tune into you for.
00:21:35.440 So you probably won't be anyone's favorite account this way
00:21:38.640 as like a general use,
00:21:40.080 but you will be a lot of people's go-to source
00:21:43.660 on kind of a particular thing.
00:21:45.600 And this is very useful
00:21:46.420 because a lot of people usually have multiple interests.
00:21:48.600 So maybe you've got somebody who's interested in politics,
00:21:50.920 but they also play video games.
00:21:52.720 So like sci-fi literature,
00:21:54.620 they like funny cat videos,
00:21:56.060 like they're going through all these different topics.
00:21:58.940 And so they kind of assemble
00:22:01.020 all these different accounts that they're following,
00:22:03.180 each of which are experts in a specific area.
00:22:06.420 So if you can consistently post on something,
00:22:08.660 if you're a subject matter expert
00:22:09.960 or you're passionate about something,
00:22:11.720 you're willing to do research or make content on it,
00:22:14.560 you're willing to do deep dives or make videos,
00:22:17.500 these are all things that you can do
00:22:19.440 and kind of create that subject matter expert class.
00:22:22.520 Now, there's also some crossover here
00:22:25.680 with the meme account.
00:22:26.540 You've probably noticed there are meme accounts
00:22:28.140 that only post about a specific thing.
00:22:30.680 So, you know, these are memes that are all about sports
00:22:33.260 or these are memes that are all about cats
00:22:34.980 or these are memes that are all about politics
00:22:37.500 or, you know, whatever.
00:22:38.740 And so, you know, these aren't mutually exclusive,
00:22:41.680 but I'm just saying if you want to move beyond
00:22:43.720 just the, I don't have a face,
00:22:45.400 I don't have a personality,
00:22:46.780 all I do is post memes and they're funny
00:22:48.600 to something where I express opinions
00:22:51.640 and I actually kind of have a more meaningful content
00:22:55.740 that allows people to understand what I'm thinking
00:22:58.280 and more of a personality,
00:22:59.760 then this is where your subject area expert really helps.
00:23:03.080 Again, focus is really important.
00:23:04.980 If you're a subject matter account
00:23:07.680 and you start posting off subject,
00:23:09.740 you'll see a huge dip in your responses
00:23:12.820 when you post off subject.
00:23:14.900 Again, that doesn't mean you can't ever do it.
00:23:16.720 Doesn't mean you can't ever try to branch out.
00:23:19.100 Don't be a slave 100% just to that one thing.
00:23:22.620 But just remember, that's why most people are following you.
00:23:25.820 So if you branch out, you want something that's adjacent
00:23:27.840 or something like that,
00:23:29.200 you don't want to just start, you know,
00:23:30.680 building your entire account around,
00:23:33.260 you know, your knowledge of basketball or something
00:23:35.400 and then immediately start posting about.
00:23:38.880 What's better than a well-marbled ribeye
00:23:40.880 sizzling on the barbecue?
00:23:42.540 A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue
00:23:44.940 that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper
00:23:47.700 and delivered to your door.
00:23:49.260 A well-marbled ribeye you ordered
00:23:51.100 without even leaving the kiddie pool.
00:23:53.740 Whatever groceries your summer calls for,
00:23:56.100 Instacart has you covered.
00:23:57.900 Download the Instacart app
00:23:59.120 and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.
00:24:02.760 Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply.
00:24:05.520 Instacart.
00:24:06.380 Groceries that over-deliver.
00:24:07.940 Anime or politics or something.
00:24:10.800 You want to stay focused in a specific lane in general
00:24:14.660 that will kind of bring people back to you
00:24:17.100 over and over and over again so you're well-known.
00:24:20.060 This is another time to remind people
00:24:22.460 that Twitter is great for repetition.
00:24:25.880 A lot of people post things once online
00:24:29.040 and they think that that means that everyone has seen it.
00:24:32.600 But that's not really the case.
00:24:34.840 Twitter shows your followers
00:24:36.640 actually a very low number of your actual posts,
00:24:39.520 especially if they follow a wide variety of people.
00:24:41.980 So if you only follow like 200 people,
00:24:43.920 you'll probably see a lot of their posts.
00:24:45.760 But if you're following a thousand or more people,
00:24:48.180 which a lot of people do,
00:24:49.980 you're really going to see very few
00:24:51.640 of the posts that people make.
00:24:53.340 So remember that as when you are as a poster
00:24:55.520 putting something out there,
00:24:56.560 a lot of people ask me,
00:24:57.580 hey, why do you keep repeating this thing or that thing?
00:24:59.340 And the one answer is, well, it's really important.
00:25:01.960 But two, it's because Twitter is a place
00:25:04.800 that actually rewards that repetition.
00:25:07.940 If you are known for something,
00:25:09.100 if you're known for subject matter expertise
00:25:11.140 and you're repeating essential things
00:25:13.560 that people need to understand,
00:25:14.960 that can start to become a slogan.
00:25:16.860 That can start to be something that you're known for.
00:25:19.540 And that's good.
00:25:20.520 That kind of creates that feedback
00:25:22.200 where people identify an opinion
00:25:24.280 or a position with you
00:25:25.980 and they come back to you over and over again.
00:25:27.900 And when they see it, they call it out,
00:25:29.360 they tag you in it.
00:25:30.500 That's a positive development.
00:25:31.720 That means you're building an audience.
00:25:33.440 The third type of account
00:25:35.480 is just the personality account.
00:25:37.880 Now, these are mostly celebrities.
00:25:39.820 Celebrities come with a built-in fan base
00:25:42.860 that are just going to listen to them no matter what.
00:25:45.160 It doesn't matter what LeBron James
00:25:46.920 actually knows about politics or education or something.
00:25:49.800 He can still start a school.
00:25:50.980 He can still prattle on about an election
00:25:54.080 and people are going to pay attention to him
00:25:55.760 because he's just one of the best basketball players
00:25:57.340 of all time and it doesn't matter
00:25:58.940 how much he actually knows about things.
00:26:00.820 But if you want to become a personality account,
00:26:03.480 you really probably need to start
00:26:05.680 in a particular area first.
00:26:08.240 Usually, if you're not a celebrity,
00:26:10.120 if you're not somebody that just came
00:26:11.260 with a massive audience,
00:26:12.420 you'll need to be known for something else originally,
00:26:16.000 usually a subject matter expertise
00:26:18.020 or you had some kind of show you're producing
00:26:20.180 or something like that.
00:26:21.280 And then people just become interested in you in general.
00:26:24.780 But again, this is the account
00:26:26.620 that allows you to have the most wide variety
00:26:30.120 of things that you're going to post on.
00:26:31.800 You can post about what you're doing,
00:26:34.100 what you're making in the kitchen
00:26:36.900 and then a vacation post
00:26:39.180 and then your thoughts on a presidential election
00:26:40.980 and then what you've been reading
00:26:42.420 and what you think about a TV show
00:26:44.160 and all these things.
00:26:45.440 And that's great.
00:26:46.260 I guess you can really use it
00:26:47.360 like I guess most people use real social media,
00:26:50.180 but it only really works
00:26:51.860 if you already are a personality
00:26:53.560 that people are very compelled and interested in.
00:26:57.160 You'll see a number of people have done this.
00:27:00.220 They start as a political pundit
00:27:02.220 or they start as a video game streamer,
00:27:04.840 that kind of thing.
00:27:06.220 And they build enough celebrity
00:27:07.840 to where basically they don't have
00:27:09.800 to only talk about that stuff anymore
00:27:11.240 and they can generally expand.
00:27:13.260 So it is its own thing.
00:27:15.280 I think it's its own distinct account,
00:27:16.920 but it usually gets spun off of,
00:27:19.740 again, a subject matter expert
00:27:20.980 or somebody who is already creating an audience
00:27:23.980 that then is compelled to listen to them
00:27:26.500 about a much wider variety of things.
00:27:29.380 If you want an example of this,
00:27:30.980 think of somebody like maybe PewDiePie
00:27:33.340 or a lot of the Call of Duty streamers.
00:27:35.960 I don't know if a long time ago,
00:27:38.220 I don't know if you guys remember this time on YouTube,
00:27:40.700 there are guys like Drifter and Woody's Gamer Tag
00:27:45.320 and they started just doing videos
00:27:47.820 about how to get better about playing Call of Duty.
00:27:51.220 And then eventually they got such big audiences
00:27:53.360 that people started watching them play Call of Duty
00:27:55.720 while they were talking about their lives
00:27:57.680 or their girlfriends or race cars
00:27:59.740 or political philosophy or fiction or movies.
00:28:03.660 And eventually their audiences
00:28:06.320 didn't really care much about the Call of Duty anymore.
00:28:09.080 And what they really cared about
00:28:10.020 was these people's opinions
00:28:11.240 on a vast variety of subjects.
00:28:14.480 PewDiePie, again, liked that
00:28:15.600 where a lot of people started watching him
00:28:17.280 for the video games,
00:28:18.340 but then they were just watching him
00:28:20.000 for the many different things that he did.
00:28:21.900 He started doing meme reviews
00:28:23.200 and then he was talking about Aristotle.
00:28:26.440 He just went all over the place
00:28:27.620 and he still had an audience
00:28:28.880 that was willing to follow him.
00:28:30.120 The same thing could be true on Twitter,
00:28:31.800 but you usually have to start somewhere else.
00:28:34.640 You have to pull people in on a different thing
00:28:37.040 and then eventually you can kind of have
00:28:38.780 one of these personality accounts
00:28:39.940 if you're successful enough.
00:28:41.340 All right, so those are the ways you can use Twitter.
00:28:43.840 Those are ways to think about Twitter.
00:28:45.960 A couple of other things
00:28:48.100 that aren't necessarily related directly
00:28:50.820 to how to grow an account,
00:28:53.240 but just ways to think about Twitter.
00:28:55.080 When people are posting on Twitter,
00:28:57.060 there are very emotional people.
00:28:59.520 There are a lot of people who are just posting
00:29:01.080 because they're emotions,
00:29:02.080 but also remember there are a lot of people
00:29:04.440 who are posting for a very specific agenda and purpose.
00:29:08.780 They have a disciplined understanding
00:29:10.480 of what the platform does and how to use it.
00:29:14.080 And you can really see this interaction
00:29:16.740 when a professional influence person
00:29:20.480 kind of gets into it with a motive person
00:29:23.040 because that person will step in
00:29:25.040 and they're just arguing
00:29:26.620 like a boomer argues politics on Facebook, right?
00:29:29.600 I can't believe you said that.
00:29:31.020 I can't believe blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:29:33.240 When people are doing that
00:29:34.760 and then you see the account
00:29:36.120 just kind of use them and humiliate them
00:29:38.840 in front of their audience,
00:29:40.520 that account is doing something very different, right?
00:29:43.520 The bigger account is using,
00:29:45.740 the person who's more disciplined
00:29:46.920 is using the emotion of the posters
00:29:49.940 to entertain their own audience
00:29:52.240 and reinforce their own ideas
00:29:54.380 and spread their own ideas.
00:29:56.060 So there are very disciplined ways to use Twitter
00:30:00.100 and to understand those social interactions
00:30:02.620 and turn them to advantage,
00:30:04.500 but they require a different
00:30:06.240 and more methodical way of posting
00:30:08.560 as opposed to somebody who is just out there
00:30:11.400 kind of feeling things and throwing things out there.
00:30:13.980 A couple other things to take advantage of
00:30:16.400 if you're just trying to understand ways to grow Twitter.
00:30:19.240 Twitter does not always, again,
00:30:22.140 necessarily reward in-depth content.
00:30:24.940 That doesn't mean don't make in-depth content.
00:30:26.760 I'm not saying don't be smart on Twitter.
00:30:28.340 You should absolutely be smart on Twitter.
00:30:30.360 What I'm saying is understand
00:30:31.820 that that is usually rewarded
00:30:33.720 after you have eyes on you for other things.
00:30:36.660 So again, quick reactions to headlines, posting memes.
00:30:41.620 The key is regular content.
00:30:43.820 Twitter rewards regular content.
00:30:46.040 If you're active and in the algorithm,
00:30:48.480 you'll notice a lot of people
00:30:49.520 who say very unintelligent or vapid things
00:30:53.640 have a very large amount of interaction
00:30:56.880 and wide audience.
00:30:58.180 That's because they're appealing to the fact
00:31:00.080 that the algorithm prefers that kind of interaction.
00:31:03.640 Now, one of the things I like to do
00:31:05.440 is post wide and then post specific.
00:31:09.220 So I'll do something that I know
00:31:10.980 is gonna get a good wide reaction.
00:31:12.920 It's gonna draw a lot of people in,
00:31:14.100 a good meme or a good headline reaction
00:31:16.260 for something that is very popular at the moment
00:31:18.440 that is gonna give me a lot of reactions in the algorithm.
00:31:21.960 And then I will follow up
00:31:23.700 with something that is more specific,
00:31:26.260 intelligent, thorough,
00:31:28.180 you know, that kind of thing brings in the detail.
00:31:30.440 So you start with the wide funnel
00:31:32.040 that brings in the audience
00:31:33.600 and then you get down to specific stuff
00:31:35.940 that allows you to kind of open up
00:31:37.680 and give a more complicated and intelligent response.
00:31:41.500 Just remember that, you know, you gotta have a billboard
00:31:44.500 before you can get people to the restaurant.
00:31:46.400 You know what I mean?
00:31:46.860 You gotta have simple advertisements
00:31:48.820 before people come down and sit down
00:31:50.300 and watch your exciting movie.
00:31:52.440 You just have to do these things
00:31:54.040 that'll bring in the people
00:31:55.120 before you usually get the wider audience.
00:31:57.580 Once you have it,
00:31:58.280 once you've got that kind of larger audience,
00:32:00.340 then you can post those big, you know,
00:32:02.200 think pieces and people will notice them.
00:32:04.460 But if you effort post
00:32:05.580 and you put out these massive threads
00:32:07.060 and you release your life's work,
00:32:08.800 it's very intelligent
00:32:09.700 and you have no one watching your account
00:32:12.200 because there's just nothing
00:32:14.420 that's engaged with the algorithm previously,
00:32:16.160 then you'll just have dropped it into nothing.
00:32:18.740 It'll be dropped into a void.
00:32:20.340 So that's something to keep awareness of.
00:32:22.860 Think, pay attention to what's rolling on Twitter,
00:32:25.680 what's in the algorithm.
00:32:28.560 You know, these things pop up
00:32:29.940 and that doesn't mean you have to chase
00:32:31.940 every one of these.
00:32:33.040 If you don't have something smart to say,
00:32:34.840 you don't have something interesting to say,
00:32:35.960 just don't say it.
00:32:36.880 Don't just, you know,
00:32:37.620 say things for the sake of saying them.
00:32:39.760 However, if you do see something that is,
00:32:42.740 you know, that is a big event,
00:32:44.460 if a big event is happening
00:32:45.720 and a lot of people are talking about it simultaneously
00:32:47.880 and you have something intelligent to say on that,
00:32:50.240 then focus on it
00:32:50.960 and don't be scared to say multiple things about it.
00:32:53.120 Don't be scared to post about it multiple times
00:32:56.080 because it's going to pop in the algorithm multiple times,
00:32:58.540 that kind of thing.
00:32:59.320 All right, so those are just some tips on how to use them.
00:33:01.860 Again, those are only useful
00:33:03.040 if you're wanting to grow an account.
00:33:04.340 If you want to have somebody be somebody
00:33:06.220 who has some influence or a audience on Twitter,
00:33:11.400 you know, just never get too big for your britches.
00:33:13.780 At the end of the day, it's Twitter.
00:33:15.600 But just, you know,
00:33:16.400 that if you want to grow that stuff,
00:33:18.460 that's for you.
00:33:19.400 If you don't want to be that person,
00:33:20.760 if you just want to enjoy the news
00:33:22.600 or the memes or whatever,
00:33:24.040 then ignore all that.
00:33:25.380 That's not a big deal for you.
00:33:27.140 Last thing I want to talk about
00:33:28.420 is where the platform is going.
00:33:30.700 So Elon is making a lot of changes.
00:33:33.200 Some of these changes are for the better.
00:33:35.840 Some of these changes are for the worse.
00:33:37.780 Some of these changes,
00:33:38.660 I'm not sure where they're going,
00:33:40.120 but let's talk about a few of them.
00:33:42.040 So obviously the first thing that happened
00:33:43.480 is a lot of banned accounts got returned
00:33:45.660 and some things that you used to not be able to talk about,
00:33:48.740 like a pandemic that I still can't really get into on YouTube,
00:33:51.760 or you're allowed to talk more candidly
00:33:54.460 about trans issues, those kinds of things.
00:33:56.820 That stuff has changed.
00:33:58.040 And so those things are good on Twitter.
00:34:00.300 It's better that we don't have those level of restrictions.
00:34:03.620 It's still not a free speech platform, to be clear.
00:34:06.560 It's still not just you can post anything
00:34:09.020 that they can and do and regularly
00:34:11.340 will ban people over all kinds of stuff.
00:34:15.120 So I'm not saying that Twitter is perfect at all.
00:34:18.340 It's not.
00:34:19.280 But obviously it's somewhat better,
00:34:22.660 especially on a couple of specific issues
00:34:24.880 than it used to be.
00:34:25.940 And it's nice to have accounts like the Babylon Bee and stuff back.
00:34:28.880 So those are positive changes,
00:34:31.380 even though, again, it's still very possible to get banned.
00:34:34.500 You could still get brigaded with three reports,
00:34:36.980 those kind of things.
00:34:37.940 So I'm not saying that they fix those problems, really,
00:34:40.600 that they still exist.
00:34:42.040 So that's one change that Elon has made.
00:34:45.480 A big one that is coming now
00:34:47.980 is monetization and sponsors.
00:34:51.860 So a really interesting thing that's happened
00:34:54.060 is Elon wants to pay people to post.
00:34:57.160 I mean, I'm sure you've seen a lot of big accounts
00:34:59.500 post these huge things in their bank account.
00:35:02.380 Yeah, all of a sudden they get tens of thousands of dollars
00:35:05.160 show up in their bank account,
00:35:06.360 which is fantastic, good for them.
00:35:08.140 I mean, you know, some money is better than none.
00:35:10.420 So that's great.
00:35:11.480 A lot of people were doing this for free, essentially,
00:35:13.720 and now they're getting paid.
00:35:14.720 So that's very nice.
00:35:16.360 But this is also tied in
00:35:18.400 with kind of the blue check thing, right?
00:35:19.960 So a big change that happened on the platform
00:35:22.860 was Elon opening up the subscription service
00:35:25.460 and the blue checks.
00:35:27.240 So originally blue checks were only given to people
00:35:30.640 who had some kind of social status.
00:35:32.880 They had some kind of government position.
00:35:34.660 They were celebrity.
00:35:35.860 It was a system where it was very opaque.
00:35:38.420 You didn't really understand what was going on.
00:35:39.840 No one was sure how and why
00:35:41.440 sometimes you would get a blue check.
00:35:43.100 You could apply for it,
00:35:44.120 but a lot of people who should have got one
00:35:46.500 under kind of the rules of Twitter didn't get one
00:35:49.580 and people who were obviously famous
00:35:51.880 and needed the blue check to differentiate themselves
00:35:54.280 and keep them from having spoof accounts made of them,
00:35:57.140 which was the original purpose of the blue check in theory.
00:35:59.880 They got their blue checks taken away from them
00:36:02.080 or denied to them just because Twitter hated them
00:36:04.760 and it was kind of a political black mark
00:36:07.200 to take away your blue check and that kind of thing.
00:36:10.080 That was the original purpose of the blue check.
00:36:11.880 But when Elon took control,
00:36:14.200 he made blue checks basically purchasable.
00:36:16.920 You just pay for the subscription
00:36:18.220 and along with kind of getting higher engagement
00:36:21.540 and all these things,
00:36:23.020 you would also get the ability to have this blue check
00:36:25.920 to kind of differentiate yourself.
00:36:28.340 Now that had kind of two effects.
00:36:30.840 One, it blew up the blue check mafia.
00:36:33.840 Blue check used to mean you were basically regime approved.
00:36:36.700 You know, you were a journalist or you were a celebrity
00:36:39.520 or you were somebody who was in good standing with the regime.
00:36:44.780 And so that's why you received your blue check.
00:36:47.620 Now, if you had a blue check,
00:36:49.240 it just meant you paid for it,
00:36:50.420 which meant all of a sudden having a blue check
00:36:52.520 next to your name didn't really mean any kind of status.
00:36:55.740 It didn't confer any kind of privilege,
00:36:59.160 which was a big deal.
00:37:00.360 It was nice that that kind of toppled
00:37:02.220 the blue check mafia and their monopoly
00:37:05.340 because a lot of times on Twitter,
00:37:07.320 you could talk to people.
00:37:09.140 You could even make fun of people,
00:37:10.560 insult people all day long.
00:37:12.140 But if a blue check got involved,
00:37:13.780 if someone was in there
00:37:14.600 and they said something to a blue check
00:37:16.460 that didn't like,
00:37:17.240 all of a sudden that person would get banned.
00:37:18.820 Now the blue check could say whatever they wanted
00:37:20.600 and they weren't going to get in trouble
00:37:21.620 because they were regime approved.
00:37:23.280 But if you were harassing a blue check,
00:37:25.740 then you could get in trouble.
00:37:26.720 So that whole system got blown up by Elon
00:37:29.020 and his creation of kind of the subscription service.
00:37:32.540 Now subscription service is obviously a big deal for Twitter
00:37:35.620 because it brings in a lot of revenue
00:37:37.340 that didn't exist before.
00:37:38.840 The site was pretty much 100% free to use prior to this.
00:37:42.220 And so the invention of the blue check
00:37:44.040 that could just be purchased
00:37:46.040 brought in a large amount of money to the website.
00:37:50.040 On top of that,
00:37:51.060 now we also have this monetization model.
00:37:54.680 At first, you could just tip people.
00:37:56.060 Now you can subscribe to people
00:37:58.640 and then kind of give them a little bit of extra money
00:38:01.180 every month for some bonus content.
00:38:03.900 And then on top of that,
00:38:05.320 you also have the ability to make money from advertisers.
00:38:09.800 Now the last one is the most interesting one
00:38:12.580 because again,
00:38:13.460 those big numbers start rolling into people's bank accounts
00:38:16.000 and people get excited
00:38:16.940 and they want to get monetized and all these things.
00:38:19.480 Well, there's a couple of different problems with that.
00:38:21.880 Obviously, if you are an anon,
00:38:24.060 if you're somebody who's using a pseudonym
00:38:26.300 on the internet
00:38:28.140 and you want to get some of that cash,
00:38:30.480 well, you're basically going to have to dox yourself
00:38:32.300 to Twitter.
00:38:32.840 You're going to have to give them
00:38:33.740 a lot of personal information.
00:38:35.100 In fact, you already probably have to do that
00:38:36.760 if you have subscribed to Twitter in the first place.
00:38:40.260 And so these blue check sales
00:38:43.060 and these payouts,
00:38:45.940 they encourage people to basically make themselves known
00:38:48.560 at least to Twitter if to nobody else,
00:38:50.840 which is a lot of extra information
00:38:52.900 that Twitter gets to gain.
00:38:54.240 That's a lot of control that they get to have.
00:38:56.340 Another thing that gets to happen
00:38:57.740 with the monetization thing
00:38:59.660 is now Elon's been explaining that,
00:39:02.080 well, we're really marking people safe
00:39:04.060 for advertisement,
00:39:05.980 which means if someone is running advertisements
00:39:07.920 and they don't want their stuff to pop up
00:39:11.020 next to controversial political opinions or something,
00:39:13.500 they can just click the kind of the safe thing
00:39:16.360 when they do their advertisement
00:39:17.480 and only appear on accounts
00:39:20.200 that have been vetted as safe,
00:39:21.600 which means if you have any opinions
00:39:23.280 that aren't created
00:39:24.400 and completely owned by the New York Times
00:39:26.640 and Harvard and NPR or something,
00:39:29.600 then you probably won't be safe.
00:39:31.520 And the further away you get
00:39:33.260 from those kind of regime-approved sources
00:39:36.380 of legitimacy,
00:39:38.140 the more likely you are to be not ad-friendly.
00:39:41.560 So people who are hoping to make a living
00:39:43.600 off of Twitter
00:39:44.440 or hoping to make a decent side income
00:39:46.360 by kind of posting this stuff
00:39:47.980 basically need to post very safely.
00:39:50.540 They need to be pretty innocuous,
00:39:52.220 which means you kind of have this YouTube effect, right?
00:39:55.240 That where YouTube disincentivizes people
00:39:57.820 from having any kind of edgy opinions
00:39:59.640 or different opinions,
00:40:00.920 not discussing controversial topics,
00:40:02.460 everything just maybe needs to be really safe.
00:40:05.300 I mean, do you really want to talk
00:40:06.380 about these controversial political things
00:40:08.100 when you could just make money
00:40:09.160 talking about video games?
00:40:10.920 And so it disincentivizes certain types of content,
00:40:13.480 pushes other types of content.
00:40:15.140 It also incentivizes accounts
00:40:17.920 that care about this thing
00:40:19.000 to kind of post empty and meaningless things.
00:40:21.700 Obviously, we've already talked about
00:40:22.920 how memes and stuff are a good way
00:40:24.860 to drive your engagement no matter what,
00:40:27.560 but there is again a line, right?
00:40:29.300 Whether you want to use that constantly
00:40:31.340 is just the only way of communication
00:40:32.800 or if you just want to use that to boost things
00:40:34.860 so that you can then talk about more important stuff
00:40:37.040 or different stuff.
00:40:38.640 But really, this just encourages people
00:40:41.020 to either create controversy
00:40:42.540 or create safety, right?
00:40:44.300 Either you just want to jack up your numbers
00:40:45.820 by getting tons and tons of views
00:40:47.740 on all your posts
00:40:48.420 by being really controversial
00:40:50.480 or posting,
00:40:51.340 I should say controversial in the safe way, right?
00:40:54.160 Not controversial
00:40:54.900 because you have controversial political opinions,
00:40:57.560 controversial
00:40:57.820 because you're starting drama with somebody
00:40:59.980 or you're getting a lot of eyeballs on you
00:41:03.040 because you got some big account
00:41:05.480 to fire back
00:41:07.320 and get into some kind of drama with you about it.
00:41:10.220 That kind of stuff gets boosted.
00:41:12.260 Obviously, just kind of mindless content gets boosted,
00:41:14.680 stuff that'll get shared regularly.
00:41:16.480 Those things will get you a lot of money.
00:41:18.460 And so that definitely shapes
00:41:19.720 the way that the platform is going.
00:41:21.640 Obviously, another big change
00:41:23.960 that has been made is the name.
00:41:25.760 It's not technically Twitter,
00:41:27.120 even though I'm calling it Twitter.
00:41:28.600 Technically, it's X.
00:41:29.660 I'm just going to keep calling it Twitter
00:41:30.820 because it feels weird to call it X.
00:41:33.620 But another big thing Elon is doing,
00:41:35.380 he wants to make this the everything platform, right?
00:41:38.400 That's a big idea of his.
00:41:39.900 This is the everything platform.
00:41:41.260 So he wants this to be a video streaming service.
00:41:43.780 That's part of the monetization thing.
00:41:45.580 He wants this to be the place
00:41:46.560 where you post all of your long form content.
00:41:49.740 You know, that's why Substack became a problem.
00:41:52.240 And so he really wants to focus
00:41:53.760 on keeping people on the website.
00:41:56.060 He wants to turn Twitter into this hub of social media
00:42:01.140 where no one leaves to go look anywhere else.
00:42:04.120 Well, that's kind of a problem
00:42:05.420 because like for me,
00:42:06.400 the original reason I came on Twitter
00:42:08.100 is that's where you shared your stuff
00:42:09.880 so people would go watch other stuff, right?
00:42:12.120 So I didn't get onto Twitter
00:42:13.340 to become good at Twitter,
00:42:15.800 become, you know, big on Twitter.
00:42:17.580 I went onto Twitter to share my YouTube stuff
00:42:20.020 and then eventually my Substack stuff
00:42:21.940 and now the podcast and everything.
00:42:24.080 But I use that to drive engagement
00:42:26.120 to other outlets, to other platforms.
00:42:28.960 Now, obviously the idea is,
00:42:30.600 well, if you can monetize Twitter,
00:42:31.780 then you don't need to drive people to other platforms.
00:42:33.900 You can, everything can just stay here.
00:42:35.680 But of course,
00:42:36.260 if we already have this ad safe scenario,
00:42:39.120 if we already have this scenario
00:42:41.120 where they're already picking winners and losers
00:42:43.680 and restricting income and the bandwidth
00:42:46.200 and visibility of people
00:42:48.680 just because they're not marked advertiser safe,
00:42:52.940 that's only going to get worse.
00:42:54.960 That's only going to become more of a problem
00:42:57.260 as time goes on
00:42:59.040 and as you get focused on this platform
00:43:01.280 to the exclusion of others.
00:43:03.080 So on the podcast,
00:43:04.140 you can say what you want to say
00:43:05.980 because, well, you've got advertisers,
00:43:08.300 you're doing these certain live reads
00:43:10.220 and things or whatever.
00:43:11.520 You have people donating,
00:43:12.920 you have alternative ways
00:43:14.320 that aren't just the Twitter approved way
00:43:16.800 to generate income.
00:43:18.900 But if everything has to be Twitter safe all the time,
00:43:21.400 if everything has to make sure
00:43:22.940 that it can fit into the Twitter paradigm
00:43:24.720 when it comes to monetization,
00:43:26.960 that means you're going to start censoring yourself
00:43:29.200 on those other platforms as well.
00:43:30.800 So Twitter is already making it hard
00:43:33.080 to link things like Substack
00:43:34.680 and other stuff onto their platform.
00:43:37.000 I understand a lot of people say,
00:43:38.300 oh, well, these are just competitors.
00:43:39.760 So of course they would do that.
00:43:41.260 That's not their purpose.
00:43:42.320 Well, that's fine,
00:43:43.180 but that's why a lot of people
00:43:44.020 got on here in the first place.
00:43:45.120 Again, one of the reasons
00:43:46.620 that Twitter had the very specific user base
00:43:49.480 that it did,
00:43:50.060 it had the creatives,
00:43:51.420 had the opinion shapers,
00:43:53.040 it had all these kind of people
00:43:54.940 was because they could share their content.
00:43:57.920 It was a good place to share the content
00:43:59.960 and have it go viral.
00:44:01.440 But if Twitter is a place
00:44:02.580 where it's very hard to share a content,
00:44:04.900 then you have less and less reason
00:44:06.380 to kind of come back.
00:44:07.460 Now, obviously there's still plenty of people
00:44:08.980 on Twitter.
00:44:09.900 I'm on Twitter.
00:44:10.560 So I'm not saying this is tank them
00:44:11.980 or anything.
00:44:12.720 Hasn't done so yet.
00:44:13.680 But I'm just saying long term,
00:44:15.680 the nature of the platform could change
00:44:17.880 as Elon tries to make this
00:44:20.020 one holistic experience
00:44:22.100 where no one ever leaves the platform
00:44:24.400 as opposed to something
00:44:25.880 that is used by content creators,
00:44:29.160 celebrities, opinion shapers,
00:44:31.140 other people to drive those audiences
00:44:33.040 to their other platforms.
00:44:34.940 So it really does lend this idea
00:44:38.040 that Elon is hoping to shape
00:44:40.400 and control a lot of this stuff.
00:44:41.840 Now, interestingly, a day or two ago,
00:44:44.720 Elon posted something to the effect
00:44:46.400 of Twitter as the human hive mind
00:44:48.760 or Twitter as the human
00:44:50.080 collective unconsciousness.
00:44:52.340 That's something that sounds like a joke,
00:44:54.860 but I don't know if it's a joke.
00:44:56.720 I feel like that is something
00:44:58.160 that Elon is trying to do,
00:45:00.060 turn Twitter into this kind
00:45:02.200 of processing filter
00:45:03.260 for all of human entertainment
00:45:05.500 and knowledge and content
00:45:06.920 and all these things.
00:45:07.920 Maybe too ambitious,
00:45:09.100 maybe something that won't happen
00:45:10.260 at the end,
00:45:11.080 but it does feel like a goal that he has.
00:45:14.080 And so that's definitely a thing
00:45:16.020 to keep an eye on
00:45:17.040 as to where the platform is going.
00:45:19.320 It was something that started
00:45:20.700 as a content sharing place,
00:45:22.340 a place to go viral,
00:45:23.260 a place to kind of spar
00:45:24.880 and all these things.
00:45:26.260 But if people are focused
00:45:27.280 on ad friendliness,
00:45:28.780 ad safety,
00:45:29.880 if they're here
00:45:30.620 because they need monetization,
00:45:32.600 because he can no longer
00:45:33.920 drive traffic to other platforms,
00:45:35.840 that could very much alter
00:45:37.640 the way that people interact.
00:45:39.000 And finally,
00:45:39.880 Elon has already been clear
00:45:41.420 multiple times.
00:45:42.540 He does not like internet anonymity.
00:45:44.640 He does not think it's a good thing.
00:45:46.380 He is against it.
00:45:47.660 And so his efforts to collect
00:45:49.420 a lot of information
00:45:50.520 through subscriptions
00:45:51.280 and monetization on anons
00:45:53.620 really makes you think
00:45:54.920 that that's probably something else
00:45:56.140 he's eventually going to try
00:45:57.340 to get rid of one way or another,
00:45:58.940 which is not something
00:46:00.160 that is great.
00:46:01.080 But it does seem
00:46:02.260 with direction
00:46:02.760 he'll probably go
00:46:03.900 once he's kind of
00:46:05.160 got enough power
00:46:06.200 to do that.
00:46:07.440 All that said, guys,
00:46:08.460 that's kind of what
00:46:09.280 I wanted to cover on Twitter.
00:46:11.100 Just give you an idea
00:46:12.020 of how to think about Twitter,
00:46:13.940 what it is,
00:46:14.940 some ways you might be
00:46:15.860 successful on it
00:46:16.600 if you want to,
00:46:17.820 and then where I thought
00:46:18.920 Twitter was going.
00:46:20.040 If you enjoyed the video,
00:46:21.060 of course,
00:46:21.540 please make sure
00:46:22.060 that you go ahead
00:46:22.520 and subscribe to the channel.
00:46:23.980 And if you'd like
00:46:24.500 to get these broadcasts
00:46:25.600 as podcasts,
00:46:26.520 make sure that you check out
00:46:27.540 The Oren McIntyre Show
00:46:28.600 on your favorite podcast platform.
00:46:30.840 Thanks for coming by, guys.
00:46:31.960 And as always,
00:46:32.940 I'll talk to you next time.