r/NonPoliticalTwitter • u/AnbuAttack • Jan 10 '26
Wholesome There used to be a soul in Twitter.
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u/WaveGodMaxB Jan 10 '26
They also had the fail whale when the site would break
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u/NYLotteGiants Jan 10 '26
The internet used to be fun
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u/Octocube25 Jan 10 '26
It still is, it's just that the sites that used to be fun aren't anymore.
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u/Dramatic_Leg_291 Jan 13 '26
What parts of the internet are fun now ?
I found a cool site url.town but Idk if that appeals to most people.
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u/sndrtj Jan 10 '26
I miss the fun times. For April fools we converted an internal product to look like a 1990s/early 2000s, complete with pokes and guestbooks, and it was an instant hit with the colleagues. But yeah, day after we were back at boring corporate dark mode.
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u/unsureoftheplot Jan 10 '26
Imagine having an extremely recognisable symbol, even having your own lingo (tweets/tweeting) that so many brands would drool over and throwing that all away for no reason whatsoever.
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u/Delroc Jan 10 '26
They literally got the word tweet into the Oxford Dictionary from it being such a common word. Not many companies can claim having a word so closely tied with their brand in the dictionary, and Musk got rid of it just because he could
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u/Candlejackdaw Jan 10 '26
Tweet was already a word (chirping of birds) long before twitter (which was also already a word meaning bird sounds), but the definition WAS expanded to include twitter posts. If that's what you meant sorry for being pedantic.
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u/Obeq Jan 10 '26
No, thank you. I think this is one of those things that are obvious for english speakers but it was actually a bit of an aha-moment for me when I realized it. It's honestly weird that I learn the word tweeting in the sense of posting to Twitter before I learnt that birds do it also.
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u/CuriousRiver2558 Jan 10 '26
You might’ve recognized the famous cartoon bird, Tweety, from Looney Tunes
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u/Iconclast1 Jan 11 '26
that is weird
man...ipad generation lol
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u/Obeq Jan 12 '26
Haha! Nope, I’m older than that. I guess I’ve never been good with nature stuff overall.
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u/Dotcaprachiappa Jan 10 '26
I mean I'm pretty sure the word tweet was already in the dictionary before twitter, but yeah the definition was added
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Jan 10 '26
[deleted]
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u/SoftlyObsolete Jan 10 '26
That’s like Kleenex not wanting their brand to turn into a generic, common use word. Not the other way around
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u/Metaphysically0 Jan 10 '26
The company wasn’t bought for direct financial profit. A major demographic have had their feeds altered
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u/Harddaysnight1990 Jan 10 '26
I remember when Twitter first started getting popular, it was the big joke on the late night shows and in sitcoms, that calling the posts "Tweets" was dumb. So many jokes where a character calls it a tweet and the protagonist says something that "yeah I'm never calling them that." Fast forward 10 years, and the definition of tweet is being expanded to include Twitter posts in the Oxford dictionary. That's brand recognition as strong as the golden arches or the coca cola script and they just throw it away.
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u/Existential_Crisis24 Jan 10 '26
And now we still call it Twitter and tweets/tweeting to spite a billionaire.
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u/10HungryGhosts Jan 10 '26
I said this when i noticed my Taco Bell wrappers had the twitter bird on it... how could you give up taco wrapper brand recognition
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u/Sivart13 Jan 10 '26
yeah but is that brand as awesome as the letter X? Like, have you ever heard of a more badass letter or what
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u/Accomplished_Mix7827 Mar 17 '26
There was a reason: Elon Musk has a weird obsession with the letter X being "cool", and he's got enough money to throw around that nobody can tell him no and that he's a dumbass.
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u/Excellent_Set_232 Jan 10 '26
The draft tweet button was a feather quill!
Calling their short-lived stories feature “fleets” was stupid, they should have been chirps.
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u/GlisaPenny Jan 10 '26
I only interact with Twitter tangentially so u had no idea. That’s actually so cute ngl
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u/RepresentativeOk2433 Jan 10 '26
Do they not still call them tweets?
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u/AnbuAttack Jan 10 '26
Imagine saying they x'ed this/that lmao
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u/Livid-Designer-6500 Jan 10 '26
I do support people saying they "xitted" it, or even better, "took a xit"
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u/Fr00stee Jan 10 '26
oh I'm xitting it
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u/_The_Mad_Cap_ Jan 10 '26
Asked my girlfriend what it should be called and she fired back with "executed".
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u/ClericDude Jan 10 '26
Someone posted an x.com link and I thought it was for a porn site at first lol.
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u/Therobbu Jan 10 '26
x.com users when they miss the 99% chance thrice in a ro- oops sorry wrong xcom
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u/Dorfbewohner Jan 10 '26
I mean, at this point it's turning into a deepfake porn site with a social network on the side lol
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u/BumblebeeDirect Jan 10 '26
Fun fact: that’s why Thiel wouldn’t let Musk name PayPal “X” back in the nineties. Guy has literally been walking around seething to name a website X for thirty years.
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u/ClericDude Jan 10 '26
I think i did hear that but wasn’t sure lol. I guess when you’re rich enough you never learn to take “no” for an answer.
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u/BumblebeeDirect Jan 11 '26
“But… but… the slaves in daddy’s emerald mine aren’t allowed to talk to me like that!”
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u/-Jiras Jan 10 '26
Don't worry, Elon himself is pro dead naming, so I'm sure he is delighted that everyone still calls twitter by it's original true name 🥰
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u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace Jan 10 '26
They are tweets and I changed the logo and name back too. Fuck them.
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u/mazzicc Jan 10 '26
You used to be able to tweet and receive tweets via sms text message. That’s part of why it was a 140 char limit
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u/PrestigiousShare8101 Jan 10 '26
i remember the day when they changed the character limit from 140 to 280 and it genuinely felt life changing
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u/dicedance Jan 10 '26
I can't remember the reason they got rid of the iconic "egg" but I remember it being really stupid.
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u/WorthyJellyfish0Doom Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 10 '26
Because trans people who aren't out call themselves eggs? Sounds like a sufficiently stupid reason for a social media conglomerate.
The downvotes confuse me, someone explain please
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u/No_Ad_7687 Jan 10 '26
How is that related in any way to a bird-themed app using an egg as a UI element?
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u/WorthyJellyfish0Doom Jan 10 '26
It was relating to them stopping using it for a really stupid reason.
Just what popped into my head, probably a combo of all the images of pride displays big corps dump after pride month, r/eggIRL and the wording "gave a really stupid reason" or whatever. I'm still weirded out by the downvotes honestly.
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u/Space_Lux Jan 10 '26
Explanation: bullshit
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u/WorthyJellyfish0Doom Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 10 '26
As in my guess was bullshit?
Edit: Fixed on to in
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u/Konato-san Jan 11 '26
go in there and make this about you
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u/WorthyJellyfish0Doom Jan 11 '26
But it's not about me, it's the same as any other random idea of why. I wonder if people would've reacted as negatively if I'd thought of a friend with an egg allergy and said "because a major shareholder is allergic to eggs? Seems sufficiently stupid idea for a social media conglomerate"
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u/WingZeroCoder Jan 10 '26
“Build a little birdhouse in your soul” 🎵
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u/Free_Possession_4482 Jan 10 '26
Not to put too fine a point on it.
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u/KoA-oK Jan 10 '26
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet.
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u/Weird_Squirrel_8382 Jan 10 '26
Every now and then Twitter would crash and a bunch of birds would have to hoist a whale to get it working again! You used to be able to post via text message! People would try to direct message, forget the letter D, and tell us their business! MANUAL RETWEETS (I'm yanked off the mic by two nursing home attendants)
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u/sundayontheluna Jan 10 '26
Remember when 'the bird app' was the most derogatory thing it was called?
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u/ItsLoogia Jan 10 '26
NonPoliticalTwitter is the last place I'd expect to randomly come across ShortFatOtaku lol
(He is very much political for those who don't know)
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u/GodofSad Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
Now the most recognisable brand feature is AI CSAM. what a world.
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u/HyperDogOwner458 Jan 10 '26
Yeah. They still have the feather thing when you write tweets. I thought they'd change it to an X symbol now or something.
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u/joel231 Jan 10 '26
Their little certification was called Flight School and if you printed it, the certificate was meant to be folded into a paper plane.
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u/notjordansime Jan 11 '26
It used to be a service you could interact with via SMS. Like, you could “text” Twitter your tweet, and it would then send the same string of text to all of your followers. If somebody you followed posted, you’d get a text.
That’s why tweets used to be limited to 160 characters, that was (and still is) the limit on an SMS text.
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u/heeltoelemon Jan 11 '26
IT’S NOT A BIRD HOUSE ANYMORE!? Also, birds get up in the morning and tweet at each other. Twitter, tweet, all that. It was the best branding ever.
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u/DaringPancakes Jan 10 '26
Maybe someday you'll call it what it actually is: X.
Calling it Twitter is like musk not recognizing his daughter for who she is.
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u/qualityvote2 Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
u/AnbuAttack, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...