I wrote a comment on a piece on Amy Odell’s Back Row newsletter recently. It was about fashion, and whether or not we’re likely to see a shift towards size inclusivity any time soon. I wrote:
Right now, if you're a brand that's surviving in the fashion world and catering solely to thin people, what incentive have you to include fat people too? Sure, you might make more money EVENTUALLY but you'll have to overhaul your entire production process, from fit models to designers who know how to design for fat bodies to fabric quantities and even your warehouse space potentially. It seems easier to just try to get the thin people to buy more of what they're already into.
And that's the rub: time has shown again and again (very pertinent, albeit dramatic, example is Shein) that people don't care about things that don't affect them, and it's very rare that we'll actually take a stand and stop doing or eating or buying something we like EVEN IF it's damaging other people.
Make those other people FAT people – that is, a group that is still roundly and constantly discriminated against in almost every sphere, and not only that but said discrimination is ACCEPTED because people just think fat people are somehow "at fault" for being fat in the first place – and the likelihood of thin people taking a stand on their behalf becomes infinitely lower.
It's so depressing but, honestly, I can't see it changing any time soon.
I think about this a lot – the sad, tragic fact that “people don’t care about things that don’t affect them” (yes, I will spend this entire piece quoting myself), especially at moments when I am exhibiting that very behaviour, doing – or consuming – something that I know is bad for the planet, society at large or other, specific, faraway people.
I think about it, for example, when I’m buying on Amazon; as I consider getting my second pair of AirPods, despite the fact that my first pair died within two years of purchase; even as I squeeze fresh lime into my chunky home-made glockymolo.
I’ve been thinking about it, too, as I read headline after headline detailing Elon Musk’s horrifying Twitter takeover. It feels a little like watching as evil enemy forces, having defeated the resistance, begin to burn villages and turn the citizens of their captured planet into slaves (I like sci-fi, okay?!).
This tweet (lol!) also sums things up well:
But it wasn’t until I saw the reports of who, exactly, Musk had fired from Twitter, that I thought, I probably shouldn’t be here any more.
Within a week of taking over at the social media company, he warned of imminent layoffs that would affect up to 50% of Twitter’s employees; yesterday, he got rid of the human rights and accessibility teams, along with the machine learning ethics, transparency and accountability team.
He got rid of the team dedicated to fighting misinformation, which makes sense, given that Musk seems to think that there should be no safeguards on a platform with almost 400 million users.
I first joined Twitter in 2007, at the urging of my cousin, Roseanne (the same cousin I have just waved off at Fort Wayne International Airport, after a gorgeous week of sightseeing and apple-picking and pumpkin pie-eating and trick-or-treating).
She predicted that Twitter was going to be big, and that I, a journalist working on a part-time basis at The Irish Times, would be wise to jump aboard.
I would take a break, a few years later, deactivating my account for almost a full 12 months before – at the last moment – running back, as if into the arms of an old lover. Aside from that brief hiatus, I have been an avid Twitter user throughout its existence; at one stage, I was berated (at the very same Irish Times job for which being on Twitter was supposed to be an advantage) for spending too much time on Twitter during my eight-hour production shift.
Outraged, I immediately logged on to see exactly what they were on about – surely I hadn’t been on Twitter all that much?! I counted the tweets I’d sent in the first three-and-a-half hours of my working day: 72. They may have had a point.
I have made many mistakes on Twitter. I have mistaken Twitter banter for flirting, confused intellectual interest with attraction, and found myself on a date with someone I’d been flirtily DMing for months, only to discover that I didn’t fancy them at all.
I have insulted people – many people, in fact. One of the earliest, and most memorable (to me, anyway) was when a friend of a friend – we had never met – shared, “Why can’t I think of anything interesting to tweet?” and I responded, “Low IQ?” It was the kind of jibe I’d make to my sister, or my best friend, and we’d both laugh uproariously. When pithily remarked to a stranger, however, it took on an extremely bitchy tone. We were nemeses for years afterwards.
I have waded into rows that had nothing to do with me; I have defended myself against insults that had a lot to do with me, but were, I realise now, less about me than about the people making them. I have spent hours arguing with people I didn’t – and will never – know about things I barely care about. I have raged and I have cried and I have laughed and I have raged, again, all because of this little social media platform and its little blue bird.
I have made friends – good friends – on Twitter. I was with one of those good friends in Burger King at 2am on a Friday night when a drunk man at the table next to us asked, “So… where did you two meet?” and, when we replied, “online”, he began to lick his lips in a most revolting fashion. Oh, how we LOLed.
I have learned things on Twitter, too. I have read articles I would never otherwise have read; signed up to newsletters I would never otherwise have known about; I have laughed out loud at threads by people smarter and funnier and more observant than I am, all the while thinking, why couldn’t that be me?!
I have watched as Twitter became a noisier, angrier, more hostile place, where TERFs and right-wing agitators and people who say things like, “you have pronouns in your bio – that says all I need to know about you” go to stoke the fires of other people’s outrage (and, I guess, their own).
I miss Ye Olde Twitter, where we’d congregate to watch The Late Late Show and tweet about its lack of representation, the ridiculousness of having a cow appear on national television to predict the weather, the hilarious unpredictability of children tasked with reviewing toys, live on camera.
I miss tweet-ups: IRL meet-ups of Twitter folk, arranged by those more organised than I am, which often came with finger food and free entertainment, provided by whatever establishment thought that having some of Ireland’s most prolific tweeters under their roof might be good for business.
It was, I suppose, both the best of times and the worst of times (as so many things are, when you think about it).
But all good things must come to an end. (Parting is such sweet sorrow.)
I would never describe myself as a spontaneous person, but I have always been good at quitting, at least when it seems like the logical next step.
Though I won’t lie and pretend I’m not enjoying watching Elon Musk melt down in the face of comedians taking the piss out of him, staying on Twitter feels too much like condoning the concept of free speech at all costs (except when it’s slagging Elon, of course) – a libertarian view I suspect my optometrist would be most delighted to support.
So, as Cher in Clueless would say: I’m outty. (It’s not like I haven’t got enough to be doing anyway.)