I deleted Twitter the moment I heard Elon Musk was poised to take over. I could sense the end crawling closer and closer, so I abandoned the ship, and that seems to have been the right decision, given the recent mass exodus of Twitter – sorry, X – users due to the overwhelming amount of bots, rampant far-right rhetoric, and Elon Musk as an individual.Â
Threads – a product of Meta – was proposed to the public as the “better” version of X, the alternative that would adhere to Twitter’s original values. However, Twitter still held its spot as one of the top social media platforms, even as it transitioned into “X,” which, as a moniker, has not caught on years after its introduction.
Twitter – in whatever form it may be in – as it seems, couldn’t be left behind. After all, social media could be considered a necessity in the 21st century. It brings news and connection to the masses in an easy, digestible form, and while there are obviously many issues that spring from social media, its difficult to be without it. 63% of Gen Z rely on social media for their news, forming opinions off of fifteen-second snippets or clicking the link in an account’s bio to read up on a new topic. Twitter was the place to go for news, for a period of time, that is. It was also the place where you could hear from some of your favorite celebrities, one of Twitter’s most iconic being Stephen King.
Stephen King is the best-selling author of classics such as Carrie, The Shining, It, The Stand, and many more (65 novels and novellas, in total, plus 200 short stories). However, King is also a social media icon, with screenshots of his tweets gaining hundreds of thousands of likes on different social media platforms and I’m sure he gets plenty of traction on X, but I will not go back to that hellscape to check.
And King won’t be going back, either. But we will get to that later.
First, let’s talk about X’s biggest competitors.
Threads has developed quite the following as the easiest alternative to X, as it can be accessed through Instagram and connected to your Instagram account. Both Threads and Instagram are Meta products, so the success is not surprising on that front. It launched on July 5, 2023, and has surpassed 275 million monthly active users, nearing the 318 million users on X as of October, a number estimated by the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
Bluesky, on the other hand, is a new social media app modeled after Twitter — after all, it was created by Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter, as a Twitter project in 2019, later becoming a separate platform under the current CEO, Jay Graber. The goal of Bluesky was to be a completely decentralized version of Twitter, one that no single entity or person holds.Â
Since the 2024 election, swaths of people have fled X for Threads and Bluesky to escape the flood of MAGA users, causing Bluesky to shoot up to the #2 app in social networking, just after Threads. X remains #1 in the news category, though, and I can only hope that changes soon, given the amount of dis and misinformation that permeates the site.Â
Anyway, back to Stephen King.
King remained on Twitter as it transitioned to X just as many others did, unaware of how things would change and at what maginitude they would. I wouldn’t even call it a snowball, but an avalanche into the app it is now, but King held his ground. King was the blue dot in a red state, fighting against the bigotry promoted over the app, discussing the prominence of book banning nationwide, and sometimes just calling Trump a tool and it was all wonderful to see. But, as the ship was sinking further below the surface of the water, King jumped on the Threads lifeboat, announcing his departure from X, calling it “toxic.” That’s one way to put it…
On November 14, 2024, King published his first thread on Threads (a very creative name), quickly gaining over 60 thousand likes and over 700 thousand followers in the days since.Â
King, to me, symbolizes the phenomenon of people cutting off Trump-supporting friends and family. We can no longer associate with those who vote against the lives of the marginalized and, instead, vote for a felon and sexual abuser. Many tried to bridge the widening gap between the left and the right on X, just as they did at the Thanksgiving dinner table, but that work has been in vain. As opposed to beating a dead horse, those same people are choosing to leave. Staying in a relationship or on an app you know is “toxic,” is no longer the “tolerant” decision, after all, you cannot tolerate intolerance. King may seem to be just another guy abandoning one platform for another, but his prominence on Twitter and later on X was palpable, but, somehow, not enough. King, and many others, can be found on both Threads and Bluesky, continuing their same antics from X over to these new forums. So, if you are a fan of Stephen King making fun of Trump or posting information about his newest releases, there is still plenty where that came from.