Yep, that's how I use it, too. For instance, Elon is muted, so I don't have to see his stuff, but not blocked; In the extremely unlikely event he crosses paths with my account, which is about 50% dedicated to making fun of him, he'd better be able to read my li'l screeds. Hope they sting. But they aren't written for him, they're written for any lurkers still susceptible to some combination of obvious truth and sharp rhetoric (admittedly, not a large crowd either). On average, my activity is some fraction of one post a day, and maybe 4 replies/day. The remnants of twitter are still undeniably the main political battlefield, the primary source of p2p ideological reckoning content, memes being one form. Yeah, it's possibly not very good that it's directed and managed by at least one guy from South Africa's cast of very un-reformed ex-apartheiders and financed by a very curious list of characters and etities. LOL, I just saw, P. Diddy (Sean Combs) is on the list. Perfectly on brand. But I've googled some of those other companies, and it's folks like Bill Ackman, at least one Saudi Prince, Qatar, the EarthLink scientologist, you know, obviously some astute investors. Edit: There's some huge banks in there.. BoA, Morgan Stanley, Barclays... yeah, again, the financial sector, completely out to lunch on cultural issues, is the way I will politely phrase it. lol "our bank is worth a moderately wealthy country, so we gave Elon a few billion USD, but it had snuck by us that he would open up the site to pro-Nazi content and how that might affect revenues".

More stuff for posterity: I've tried to include lots of concrete, widely reported news stories to avoid veering too much into my own anecdotal experiences. But... the feel of what it's like as people/bots increasingly show up to sloppily argue against you in random threads, always arguing either in bad faith, ignorance, or bot programming... Feels bad! Feels bad.

Some more anecdotal experiences are: Knowing, consciously knowing, that I am being "radicalized", or "counter-radicalized", at least (unfortunately, you cannot let fascists trample roughshod over polite society in service of pretending everything is normal). Cataloging the differences between my "radicalism" (pass me the mic and I'll spit truth until the fascists yield) vs. theirs (it's actually fine to lie and facilitate or commit violent acts in support of a demonstrably anti-American ideology). Reminding myself that I am dealing with some mix of bots and real people, and constantly trying to assess and normalize for that (more "feels bad"/sucks). Looking for distinctions between genuine vs. automated accounts (might do a longer thread on this another time, it's ripe). Deliberately trying to improve my own rhetoric in a range of contexts, audiences, and tactics (shortform is going ok). Etc.

I've blamed media plenty, but the onus of properly assessing Trump should also fall on individuals. I'm not sure how anyone can be familiar with more than 0.2% of the things Trump has said and done in the last 8 years and still believe he deserves to be anywhere near a position of power. Same with Elon. And entirely uncoincidentally, they share the same tactics: Appealing to the preservation of white cis-hetero male power to further their own self-interests and influence. And if hearing that turns anyone off, like as an automatic knee-jerk reaction, and they completely shut down their ability to even consider the possibility of it, they've played themselves right out of the game. They will not develop an accurate, self-consistent model of society capable of making reliable predictions. MAGA will not go quietly, and a huge swath of Americans need to make some major adjustments.

P.S. one week, woo! Mrs. am_Unition is pumped too. We also just got a new car (2024 hybrid Accord), so it's great that I was able to skip license plate business.