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Like much else of what’s wrong today, X is a perfect example of elite failure and capitulation. The technical infrastructure was there to build alternatives over the past three years but the institutions refused to budge. They’ll be the first to act shocked when this all repeats itself again.

Louis Gray@louisgray.com

Is @gruber.foo right? It feels like a number of those who initially left X have gone back. Very unfortunate.

11/10/26, 10:25 pm4 reposts35 likes

Bryan (they/them)

@chaosgreml.in

Ehhhh. It’s really easy to place this at the feet of individuals, but the reality is that you’re working against millennia of human behavior patterns when it comes to socialization. There’s a reason change management is a profession.

Bryan (they/them)

@chaosgreml.in

Again, this is why I *never* left X. I just don’t use it hardly ever. I go there once every couple of weeks to look at it for 5-10 minutes, and then move on. Been way more effective than *swearing off it* in a fit of pique and then missing my friends before I’d built up new spaces.

Jim Ray

@jimray.net

That’s what I mean by elite and institutional, not individual, failure. I’d say that more than anything is the defining ethos of the 21st century so far.

Bryan (they/them)

@chaosgreml.in

Gotcha, the elite part caught me off guard, since in my experience people use “elites” to mean “individuals whom I think are or should behave like institutions because they have a lot of money and power”

Jim Ray

@jimray.net

It’s so hard to distinguish but that is kinda what I mean. Tim Cook and Barack Obama and also the New York Times and the city of New York all have active Twitter accounts. That’s just a failure at so many levels starting with civil society right there.

Xan López

@xanlopez.net

I think progressives have a perverse incentive to be unwilling to even think about this, too, because they (we?) typically dislike acknowledging that some things really can and do change as a result of elite-level decision-making.

Jim Ray

@jimray.net

This is, unfortunately, a perfect example of what I mean by elite failure. It’s also why I think Obama will ultimately be remembered as a good, at times great, president who ultimately failed to be transformative in the way we needed.

Jim Ray

@jimray.net

He could’ve published that anywhere — NY Times op-ed, Harvard Law Review, barackobama.com — instead he decided on the website owned by the guy literally funding fascism around the world. To show for it, these are the top three replies that logged out X users, aka the majority of Americans, will see.