ThreadTalk is Moving… and Changing – Thoughts on Twitter, Boundaries, and Platform Ownership

You say that things change, my dear

For the last 14 years, Twitter has been the center of my writing life. And no single contribution has been as big or far-reaching as ThreadTalk, my fashion history mini-lectures on the beautiful and terrible world fabric culture.

Twitter has never been safe; it’s always been a double-edged sword. Even before this most recent crap, countless users (myself included) have been the target of hate groups, threats, and more, just for stating opinions or, you know, existing. And it’s about to get worse. It’s already gotten worse. We’ve seen the writing on the wall.

As someone who built my other career on social media, I’ve always known two things: on social media you are the product and the only way to survive is to curate your feed.

Since it became clear that Elon Musk was going to start moving Twitter in an even more terrible direction, I’ve been thinking a lot about those two points. I don’t want to leave Twitter altogether. I’m not a quitter. But his absolutely unhinged responses, supporting of antisemitism, and the fact that he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing at all, means that Twitter is not going to be a safer place any time soon.

It’s also not a place I want to feed with my most popular content.

ThreadTalk is a labor of love. It’s hours and hours of work, reams of research, and it’s something I provide for free. Yet Twitter makes money off that attention. I’m not comfortable with that any longer.

So I’ve begun a few new things that take the ThreadTalk formula and spin it off the bird app platform.

‘Cause things are gonna change so fast

• First and foremost, the entire archive is, as always, right here.
• I have a new Instagram page where I’ll be posting a dress, gown, or fashion history fun fact *every single day*. I’m also starting a TikTok page, and will be coming soon to my YouTube page with lots more to share.
• I will cross post all my content to Twitter, but the best way of keeping up with me is always to visit me here, on Patreon, or my Beacons page.

I will still share my thoughts, memes, works in progress, etc., on Twitter, but I’m not sure how long that will last either.

You can’t keep me down, though. I’m just getting started.