Once upon a time there was a Prince called Alan Brusque. Traditionally in this type of tale the prince is very handsome, significantly wealthy, and a fully fledged grownup. Prince Alan lived in a castle and courted the young maidens of the land, some of whom were very attractive and the town’s folk exclaimed - goodness, he must be very wealthy indeed!
The kingdom had a company offering communication services using carrier pigeons to deliver messages far and wide. It was named after a behaviour of the birds - Shitter.
Shitter had an older rival in town called SpaceNook run by Lord Suck a Turd but it wasn’t as popular as it once was. You had to hope that what you were interested in would be displayed on the wall, and it hardly ever seemed to be these days.
Often SpaceNook was just advertisements for products that strangely the people looking at the wall had either already purchased that very day or had just been talking about on their way to the wall. The creepy advertising and the creepier Lord Turd kind of freaked people out, there were rumours that he wasn’t actually human.
Prince Alan had been busy building new steam powered carts and had even remarkably sent a carriage many miles into the air to look out over the land. But he longed to be considered even more successful and innovative so he thought I’m going own that company Shitter and make it less shitty. He wondered if perhaps small bird-sized diapers could be used to clean up the place.
So Alan said I will give you the treasure of two dragons in return for being head Shitter. Some of the customers were a bit nervous because one of the former customers, the former King, who was banned for using Shitter to spread more manure than all the pigeons in the roost could produce, would probably be allowed to return.
He looked around the business and he said, “hang on some of these pigeons aren’t real pigeons - look that one’s a duck - I’m out”. The original owner said “yeah and he was a duck yesterday when you wanted to buy the place, an offer I accepted in good faith, so you’re in.”
Alan went away and sulked for a while. Eventually he turned up back at Shitter HQ with a large washing bowl and said alright let me in, from now on we’ll be basin all decisions on my mood of the moment. Some workers cooed with delight at the use of the word “basin”, others just grumbled that this was a coup and were immediately fired, by a large catapult which Alan had had installed ahead of his arrival.
Reaction among the employees was mixed. Some muttered that he’d need a bigger catapult, and were soon undertaking their first experience of flight. Someone said “I thought Shrek was Green”, causing a ripple of laughter.
Alan laughed at this last one, it was important to have a laugh with the team he thought. He went over to guy who had said it and slapped him on the back. It was quite a firm slap and soon the jovial joker was plummeting towards the ground having flown through a window. Alan cracked his knuckles after that hard slap and asked if anyone else had any jokes.
Recently the kingdom had been experiencing the plague, the black death, and some of the employees at Shitter had taken to working from home and had set up coops so they could send messages without having to risk infection.
Alan said there would be no more working from home, they were all to be at HQ every day from before sunrise until long after midnight for no extra pay. Some people grumbled and said, “you know even Deaf Pathos treats his employees better than this and he sits outside the privy with an hour glass yelling at people to hurry up when they were only taking a Tweet.”
The catapult was having a very busy day, over half the employees were now gone.
Alan lost patience at this point and said “either you’re back on site giving blood for the company by tomorrow or your Shitter days are done.”
Some workers said, “you know this guy really is a ‘twit head’” in private messages which were intercepted and soon the catapults were busy once again. Despite spending cuts Alan had now installed a further three catapults to keep up with demand.
Many of the remaining Shitter personnel decided to walk rather than exit as projectiles so off they went and Alan decided to lock the doors, he didn’t need them, the ungrateful twits. Customers started to get concerned - “you say the pigeons are still flying but there is no one to feed them or look after them, this isn’t looking viable any more.”
Alan rushed back to HQ. Time to roll his sleeves up - he’d calculated he only needed the remaining workers to work 57 hour days and they’d be right back on top with a streamlined, but still satisfactory, Shitting experience. Then he remembered he’d launched the guy who had the keys out the window earlier.
Ok so now you know how we came to be here. At the time of writing Twitter still exists although for how much longer is unclear.
It is scarcely believable that Elon Musk has so little understanding of what makes developers tick, cutting conditions and telling them to work much harder for no extra money in a buoyant job market is a big call.
There are some parts of the IT industry where people will work crazy hours for the sheer love of what they do. Rockets into space - you know “Boy’s Own” stuff. The games industry is notorious for paying low wages for long hours - but people really want to do it. It’s why you might have studied Computer Science. When I studied it I was interested in Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Computer Graphics, not storing records in a database.
Developers don’t want to do business computing but it pays well and generally the conditions are quite good. People might be willing to work themselves to death for something leading edge like Tesla or SpaceX, but Twitter? All you’re doing is storing and retrieving data, searching for what customers see, or don’t see.
What does Musk want? Is it all just a game that has to be “won”, an enormous ego that has to be right and cannot be questioned - like Donald Trump but with a much higher rate of staff turnover. What is his goal? To be remembered as an even bigger dick than Steve Jobs?
I came late to Twitter, I remember it back in 2008 when people seemed excited about it, I didn’t really get that excited - oh like Facebook but you can only use 140 characters? Ah no thanks - are we going back to SMS messages too?
Eventually three years ago I started a parody account @NatsLeader - some of you may have come across it.
Initially it was Soymon Brudges until he got stabbed in the back and he begat Todd Duller, who did not last very long at all. Crusher Collins took over next to pour some petrol on the dumpster fire that was the party ahead of the last election.
Eventually Crusher thought hmm no one’s stabbed old Soymon in the back for a while let’s do that again, that’s always fun, what’s the point if you aren’t crushing anyone?
But Soymon refused to walk the plank and even threatened to take control of the ship again until in drove Chris Luxon - the second coming of Key, to lead the good ship National to victory in 2023.
I have my own account @westieleftie which I started last year. It doesn’t get used a lot, but you can find me there, for the moment at least, hawking this blog, offering helpful suggestions to the likes of Sean Plunket or Chris Bishop, and sometimes tweeting.
When I first started the parody account a number of people were really supportive spreading my tweets - one person in particular was encouraging. I reckon quite a few of you will have encountered her positive messages and regular Monday thread to “celebrate all the small to big wins with everything in between.”
Sarah Chambers you rock!
Let me give you an example.
Sarah received this tweet back at the height of Covid with growing complaints from disgruntled business owners about lock-downs because she had the temerity to actually be positive about the government's response:
Did Sarah respond rudely? No.
Did she just ignore it and scroll on by? No.
She started the Champagne Liberal Business Owners Association as a support network to encourage businesses.
If this is the end of Twitter that is the sort of thing I will remember.
It will be sad, a lot of people have enjoyed it, it’s great for sharing information when there is a breaking event. Many people have found a network of like minded individuals and if Twitter disappears it will be a loss.
People share major life events on Twitter - a death of a spouse, a terrible diagnosis, and strangers are really supportive. Despite what you hear it is largely a decent place. Dialogue is generally more intelligent than Facebook and I prefer the way you interact with others.
I'd actually be amazed if Twitter was gone for good but I think the worst outcome is that the small crew of developers left manages through heroic effort to keep it all going - what an awful message that would send to terrible bosses.
And as usual, amazing track!
I don't know how you find these jewels
Super parody Nick!! Very smart 👍🏽