News

For this week’s Inneresting rebroadcast, editor Chris Csont chose this 2011 blog post in which I wondered how much of ourselves we present online. Even then, I was looking backwards:

In the seven years I’ve been running the blog, I’ve noticed the online version of myself drifting closer to the “actual” version. But there is still a difference, and that’s deliberate. Even though this site has my name on it, it’s still a fairly controlled product: a ton of useful information on screenwriting. You’re getting the screenwriter John August, not the Eagle Scout, the cook or the Real World/Road Rules Challenge completist.

For the newsletter, I wrote up a blurb to put the post in context which ended up nearly as long as the post itself.

Eleven years ago, I was talking about Facebook, a platform I’ve largely abandoned. Nearly all the same points apply to Twitter and Instagram today.

Twitter has been problematic for years, with its trolls and mobs and twitchforks. But I’m honestly grateful for it. It’s where I first met many colleagues and learned new ideas, mostly by listening in on conversations from communities I wasn’t a part of.

For all the talk about Twitter leveling the playing field, allowing direct access to powerful people, I found my blue-check status to be incredibly useful. The moment I followed someone, they would get a notification and often follow me back. That digital introduction made it easy to DM them a question like, “Hey, would you ever want to come on Scriptnotes?”

Scrolling through someone’s Twitter gave you a sense of who a person was, or at least how they wanted to be perceived.

I’m talking about Twitter in the past tense because I think it’s dead. It may still exist in six months or six years, but Elon Musk’s erratic decisions have broken its hold on the conversation. It will ever feel essential again. Maybe that’s good. Other weird things can flourish in its absence.

Meanwhile, I still use Instagram, particularly Stories and DMs. If I meet someone at a party, Instagram is probably how we’ll keep in touch. Yet it’s an every way a more extreme version of what worried me back in 2011. It’s curated, performative and artificial. It feeds body dysmorphia and parasocial relationships. But it doesn’t feel like it’s contributing to imminent collapse of democracy, which in 2022 is the low bar we’ve set.

As I’m posting this, I haven’t officially left Twitter. I still skim and reply. But I’m not going to be engaging in any discussion or debate. I’ll certainly try out Hive and Post and Mastodon, just like I used to have Tumblr and others. But I don’t expect any of them to replace Twitter for me.

Just as it was 12 years ago and seven years before that, I suspect this blog will remain the official version of me, so follow me here. RSS forever.