Quitting Time

On trading one slop feed for others.

Around the time that I was asked to write an article examining Grok’s exploding popularity to create sexualized imagery of children, I saw the above post and decided that I had had enough. My main conclusion, as I wrote for The Nation in an article published today, was that a fascist plutocrat had built a fascist media network and AI chatbot, and I didn’t want to be near that. I deactivated my X account.

I’ve been writing about X and Elon Musk for many years and will continue to. The company — and a dark chapter of its pre-Musk history — was a big part of Gilded Rage, my last book. With the help of some amazing pro bono lawyers, I intervened in a legal case against X to reveal a list of its shareholders. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about X and what it means for media, politics, tech, and culture. I would like to at least temporarily move beyond Musk’s noxious psychic terrain, which has come to define X through Grok and the site’s inducements to consume utter slop as it pushes its users toward the grimmest corners of the right-wing manosphere.

I am not keen to participate in what is clearly part of a larger fascist ideological and political project, which helped return Donald Trump to office. That project is now focused on spreading an endless torrent of lies to mask Trump’s authoritarianism. I don’t need to see more insta-react videos from washed-up special-forces operators explaining why ICE’s murders are justified.

There is little moral valence, in my view, to quitting an addictive social-media feed, especially when the alternative tends to be another social-media feed furnished by people very much like Elon Musk. (Bluesky, where I have an account, has some unsavory investors, too.) “I’m quitting this app” is a hoary, sentimental genre of writing and posting that I discussed in my 2015 book Terms of Service. There is no ethical consumption under surveillance capitalism. But attention is finite, and I feel mine being poured uselessly onto the floor. I’d like to force myself to spend time in other ways, and however cynical I am, it’s not fun that every viral post attracts a horde of antisemitic goblins. Finally, as a journalist, I think X has mostly exhausted its utility while becoming a professional liability.

I plan to work on longer projects this year — a new book and reported features, including for this Substack, this bizarre platform, also funded by tech fascists, which for now offers a decent perch from which to reach people. Maybe one day I’ll write a similar post about finally quitting this place and moving my newsletter to warmer technopolitical climes. In the meantime, if you have a tip, I can be reached on Signal at jacobsilverman.99. Thanks.