If Twitter implodes…

…here are some places online you can find me.

In June 2008, I attended the Banff World Television Festival (as it was called back then, now the Banff Media Festival). I had just launched this blog on May 16, 2008, so when I saw there was going to be an information session about this new social media platform called Twitter, I figured I should check it out.

I have no way of confirming this, but the guy leading the session may very well have been @Jack, as in Jack Dorsey. Jack (or whoever) acted like a televangelist on cocaine, racing up and down the auditorium aisles, “preaching” about … frankly, I don’t remember much except he spewed a bunch of buzz phrases I couldn’t follow. However, everybody else in the audience seemed to get caught up in the frenzy and many a Twitter handle was born that day. I didn’t join the “cult” until March 2009.

Since that time, I have been an avid user.

That’s right, nearly 100,000 tweets! Frankly, I was so looking forward to hitting that mark in the next couple of months, but then …

Every Terrible Thing That’s Happened to Twitter in the Last Two Weeks

We May Be Watching Twitter Implode in Real Time

All Twitter Offices Closed as Hundreds of Employees Resign

I have a multiverse of emotions about the possibility that Twitter might go the way of MySpace, Netscape, AltaVista, and other tech misfires, but here are my two main regrets:

• Twitter has become my main source of tracking the news, specifically the entertainment business. And not just news outlets like @THR, @variety, and @deadline, but a slew of professionals in the business I follow who help interpret the tea leaves of what’s going down in Hollywood.
• But even worse, if Twitter were to shut down, I would be losing convenient daily access to the screenwriting, film, and TV community there. Sure, Twitter can be a cesspool at times, but I couldn’t begin to count the number of writers, filmmakers, producers, agents, and managers I’ve gotten to know over the years through our shared tweets. The thought of losing that form of social intercourse … it just makes me sad.

Since this threat has emerged over the last couple of weeks, a bunch of Twitter users have asked me what I would do if the platform shuts down. So, here is where you can find me if Twitter goes the way of all flesh:

GoIntoTheStory.blcklst.com: Assuming some psychotic billionaire doesn’t buy Medium and run it into the ground, I plan on hosting this blog for the foreseeable future. Site traffic this last month has been through the roof!

Ironically, that spike in unique visitors happened around the time Musk was purchasing Twitter. Coincidence? Who knows, but check this out:

If traffic were to continue for a year at this pace, that would translate into approximately 4M unique visitors, nearly twice what the blog typically gets.

Moreover, with Twitter gone, I wonder if the blog might have a resurgence of “conversations” like it had the first few years of its existence. There were times when I’d post an article and get 10–20 responses, sometimes even more. Then as Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social interaction arose, those numbers dwindled while site traffic stayed strong.

In any event, I’ll still be here (as my mother used to say), “Good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.”

Mastodon: As a backstop in case Twitter were assassinated, I joined another social media platform on November 11, 2022. Here is my handle: @gointothestory@mindly.social. I literally have no idea what I’m doing at this point, but if Twitter goes south, I will learn as much as I can as fast as I can. Mastodon looks like a site where I can do something akin to Twitter, but right now I’m in Beta mode there.

Zero Draft Thirty Facebook group: I launched this site back in 2015 with the advent of the very first Zero Draft Thirty Challenge. Look, I know. Facebook is its own version of a hellscape, but our #ZD30SCRIPT group is wonderful. We’ve got 4.7K+ followers. No ads allowed. Monthly Scamper-A-Thons. Two Zero Draft Thirty Challenges per year (March and September). Hamsters. It’s a great group: LINK.

Instagram (@gointothestory): I’m pathetic at Instagram. Mostly photos of my family’s urban garden … my neighborhood (Andersonville) in all its progressive glory … and images of the Chicago skyline. If Twitter flames out and Mastadon turns out to be too complicated for my feeble brain, I may try to figure out Instagram, but for now… it’s pretty much tomatoes.

Finally, if there is a lesson in all this, it’s that we exist at the mercy of social media overlords who can, when glancing up from counting their billions of dollars, decide to mess with us by scrapping this or that platform. Well, here’s a way you can avoid all that.

The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character-Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling: If you own an actual copy of the book, it not only protects you from mentally unstable billionaire social media sociopaths, it’s also kinda like having me around. Actually, a more articulate, thoughtful version of me because I slaved over every single sentence in my book for twenty-one months. You may go here to acquire The Protagonist’s Journey and have a safety net against high tech uncertainty.

I sincerely hope Twitter survives this current madness. If not…

And by “I,” I mean “we.”

Onward!