Being placed in the same category as the defunct movie rental store Blockbuster is anything but a compliment, having displayed poor leadership and an inability to modernize leading to a steep downfall. But that’s what Joe Rogan sees as the future for Twitter.
During a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, comedian Whitney Cummings asked Rogan if he thinks “there’ll be a day where we will look back and go ‘remember when anyone could get on Twitter at any time’… Do you think there’ll be restrictions?”
Rogan took it a step further and said he believes Twitter is headed in the direction of Blockbuster, noting the platform’s toxic and mean nature. “There’s no empathy in these conversations and that’s a big part of the problem. You don’t see the people, you don’t feel their pain, so you can say horrible shit to them,” Rogan said.
“The vast majority of their communication is text messages and tweets and none of it is person to person,” Rogan added. “These kids are arguing with each other through texts because they don’t wanna look at each other and talk like human beings.”
While Twitter contributes to the lack of person-to-person communication in society, it certainly isn’t the sole cause. It might be wishful thinking to assume humans will course correct to focus less on technology and more on in-person communication.
As far as Twitter falling behind the times, Rogan added “We’re going to hit some new thing next, that is going to read each other’s minds. … It’s going to make this seem like nonsense.”
Although they’re no match for Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, Twitter still reaches a younger demographic than Facebook, which bodes well for its future. A study by Pew Research Center from earlier this year showed 62% of internet users over the age of 65 use Facebook, and 72% of people between 50 and 64 are on it.
Compared to other social media platforms, Twitter still provides a newsier service. If someone breaks a story, writes an article, records a podcast, gets a new job or has an edgy opinion, they’re likely to post about it on Twitter. Twitter serves as a hub for content creators to announce their work.
Aside from the platform negatively impacting human interaction, the underlying theme of comparing Twitter to Blockbuster is a lack of modernization. The inability to edit already posted tweets continues to frustrate users and likely makes people assume Twitter hasn’t grown their platform, when in fact they’ve made significant changes since launching in 2006. Twitter added the ability to live-stream and schedule tweets, they doubled the character limit, aired sports broadcasts and altered camera functionality to keep up with the likes of Instagram and Snapchat.
Considering its current impact on society, it’s hard to imagine Twitter going the way of Blockbuster, but it would have been equally difficult to predict Blockbuster’s downfall 15 years ago.
Brandon Contes is a former reporter for BSM, now working for Awful Announcing. You can find him on Twitter @BrandonContes or reach him by email at Brandon.Contes@gmail.com.
