Twitter’s King Lear

some Notes on hideous rashness

“King Lear,” Act I, Scene I, Edwin Austin Abbey (1898)

Hi friends,

As a (hideously rash?) follow-up on the subject of social platform criticism . . .

Earlier today, Substack announced Notes, a forthcoming short-form feature “designed to drive discovery across Substack, giving writers and readers the ability to recommend almost anything—including posts, quotes, comments, images, and links.”

Within hours, Twitter launched a blatant counterattack, disabling embedding, likes, and retweets of Substack links. Curiously, quote tweets still function—though these too cannot be retweeted nor liked. Tinyurl currently offers another workaround, too. Still, major Substack writers with huge Twitter followings—including one of the Twitter Files dudes—are refusing to pander to Elon and announcing they’ll abandoning him for Notes over this.

Hence Twitter’s move seems…rash—hideously so, which has me thinking about King Lear. In Act I, Scene I, just after Lear disowns Cordelia—for refusing to pander to him—the loyal Kent warns:

KENT.
Royal Lear,
Whom I have ever honour’d as my king,
Lov’d as my father, as my master follow’d,
As my great patron thought on in my prayers.—

LEAR.
The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.

KENT.
Let it fall rather, though the fork invade
The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly
When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?
Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak,
When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour’s bound
When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy state;
And in thy best consideration check
This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgement,
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least;
Nor are those empty-hearted, whose low sounds
Reverb no hollowness.

We all know how this one goes, right? Lear ignores Kent, loses Cordelia to France, and splits his kingdom between her sisters, Regan and Goneril (obviously a horrible decision; rose be damned, there’s no way a redeemable character gets named “Goneril”). They turn on him more or less immediately, leaving Lear to wonder why he hadn’t just focused on building electric cars—which he was great at—instead of literally buying likes.

I’m being a bit cheeky here, of course, but Jesters do oft prove prophets. Throttling Substack is a ludicrously ill-conceived retaliation strategy and another indication Musk does not fully understand the nature of the platform he bought—that it runs on status games and mimetic desire, and its egoic value to elite users is sharply reliant on its efficacy as a content aggregator to build prestige.

In undermining Substack within its platform, Twitter is also undermining one of its own most popular channels, its ability to aggregate content, and the heart of its very own business model: influential users. I don’t deny Musk faces a competitive threat, but, in business and literature alike, it is rarely a good idea to drive away your most loyal daughter.

I’ll likely abandon Twitter for Notes myself the way things are going . . . but will nonetheless be interested to see how Elon fares through the storm into Act V.

Peace,

Natasha