What Was Twitter? The Drift Asks The Question of The Hour

Photo by Leah Abrams

Last night, my toddler walked downstairs, tears in their eyes, and said: “Mommy, what was Twitter? And why did the billionaire Cybertruck man kill it?” It took me a while to think of an answer. A digital town square? An internet wasteland? A wellspring of “community?” A place for ░M░Y░ ░P░U░S░S░Y░ ░I░N░ ░B░I░O░?

As it turns out, my toddler is not alone in asking. A lot of people want to know What Happened (by Hillary Rodham Clinton) to Twitter. Bravely, The Drift rose to the occasion, hosting a panel at New York University titled “What was Twitter? On (Still) Being Logged On.” The event convened some of the greatest posters of our time — Willy Staley, Edward Ongweso Jr., Sam Adler-Bell, and Delia Cai, moderated by Elena Saavedra Buckley — for a two hour conversation on the past, present, and future of the platform presently known as X. Yes, you read that right: two hours. Maybe they forgot what Twitter did to our attention spans.

The Drift is known for its crowded parties and lefty politics; at risk of playing a game of inside media softball, it’s sort of like The New Yorker for people whose Lincoln Center is Metrograph. When you go to a Drift party, you imagine you’ll be like Cinderella — that agents and editors will suddenly “discover” you and decide you’re the next big thing. But in reality, you’re more likely to wait 45 minutes to order a Negroni and get ignored by people who like your posts online. As editor Krithika Varagur pointed out in her introduction, the institution-backed panel was the first for the magazine, a departure from the usual cocktail bar chatter and a maturation into the scholarly fireside chat, complete with mics, armchairs, and cans of LaCroix.