X - Twitter User?

Calm down.  I don't plan to bash Elon Musk.  I'm not overly impressed with him and I think he just might be another rich person who doesn't know how to stay in their lane.  It's funny when you hear a pro athlete get vocal about a social issue, they are told to shut up and play ball.  Now the shoe is on a different foot.  Mr. Musk needs to be quiet and fix Twitter.

When he bought the platform, I was instantly worried.  In the end, I figured that he was a successful businessman and he should be able to make it work.  The opposite has happened.  Since his involvement, Twitter has lost users, advertisers, and money.  He recently blasted advertisers for what he called holding the platform hostage for ad money.  Not to mention he fired us all up with rebranding it to X, a move I still cannot settle with.

To be fair, I am no social media expert and I have no idea how to right the ship.  I am the "Joe Six Pack" of this universe and my personal experience is what really counts to me.  I joined Twitter in 2012 at the urging of my then-superintendent, Greg Goins.  I wasn't really excited about this.  I was a Facebook guy and that was plenty to keep up with.  I could see myself creating an account and never scrolling through it.  However, Dr. Goins was on to something.  This space was a great place to network with other school administrators.  I enjoyed it and really took my account seriously.

I'm no influencer, but I had a decent engagement to Tweets and I could count on some kind of response to anything I tweeted.  Again, I was staying in my school admin lane but I did branch out and gained more followers and started following more influential people.  I really liked this momentum and I began creating blog content and Tweeting it.  I was on cruise control for several years.

When Elon Musk took over I began to call it the era of the blue check.  Almost immediately this little icon no longer symbolized a verified identity.  It signified a subscription.  This is when my Twitter activity began to slow down.  I don't pay for my little blue check mark, but my Twitter behavior has not changed.  I Tweet the same types of things, hashtag, and tag people just like always.  Overnight I saw my small amount of engagement shrink to nearly nothing.  The growth of my professional network began to slow also.  

In an effort to enjoy Twitter again, I began following sports card collectors to help nurture a hobby of mine.  Still yet, the connections do not feel organic, they feel driven by the check marks of many colors.  In fact, I am now being solicited more than ever to pay to play.  This was waiting on my feed for me just yesterday.  I can pay for reply prioritization.  Seems like the content should drive the platform and not paid prioritization, but hey I'm just a Joe Six Pack.

I don't know yet if I will soon be an ex-Twitter user.  I do know that I will use it a lot less and it is already a low priority for me when I post something.  Maybe Musk will sell off the company and it can see the good ole days again.  That might be the only way he can fix Twitter, X, or whatever the young kids call it these days.  I dare not hope for too much.

Stand for the Pursuit

I get to stand for the anthem a lot.  I mean a lot a lot.  Between my ball games, my kid's ball games, and family ball games, I might stand for the national anthem up to 2 or 3 times a week for four months during basketball season.  I even have a favorite spot to stare at on the flag.  It's the star closest to the middle of the whole flag.  I have a favorite anthem.  It's the gospel rendition by the Gaither Vocal Band.  I play it at all of the games that I work.  Give it a listen.

When I stand for the anthem I might notice those not standing, but it does not bother me.  I can't speak for or judge people's relationship with our nation.  I definitely understand mine.  The flag is a symbol that means different things to different people.  When I stand for the flag I see a continuum that seems to be open-ended.  The stripes represent our thirteen colonies and the stars represent our fifty states.  When you look at this as a storyline, our journey between these places in time, a lot is being said here.

From our beginnings as colonies to now, our nation has seen many ups and downs.  Despite this, we continue on.  The framers of the constitution designed this experiment to never be finished.  Our country is designed to endure and regardless of how ugly our history has been, we move the needle in the pursuit of happiness.  I know that the needle moves differently for some, but it does move.  I stand in respect to recognize our nation's pursuit but also I'm aware that our nation is not perfect.  This nation is mine and I will chase perfection with her.  That is why I stand.

I know that people really get upset about this and those reasons are not lost on me.  One might say a service member fought and died for the flag and you should stand for it.  That is a fair statement.  A veteran might tell you that he/she fought so you have the freedom to not stand, and that's also a fair statement.  Either way, standing or not standing is dependent upon your relationship with your country.  If you feel connected, you will stand.  If you feel disenfranchised, you might not.

Because I understand my relationship with my country, you can stand or sit during the anthem.  I really don't care.  If given the task of convincing people to stand if they don't, I would simply say that you should stand.  Stand as a cheerleader for our nation in her chase to form a more perfect union, the pursuit of happiness and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.  This is what the founders were chasing and they left it to us to finish the chase.