Why I Won't Stop Dead-Naming Twitter
The logistics of language
As you may have noticed, I call Twitter “Twitter” — I don’t say “X”. This isn’t a deep conviction; I wasn’t raised in a religion that demands that I call companies by the name they were incorporated with in front of God and the State of Delaware. It’s just a thing that I do and plan to keep doing, and the reason is pretty simple:
I’m going to call Twitter “Twitter” because “Twitter” is a word, and “X” fucking isn’t.
I’ve rolled with name changes before. I’m used to sports stadiums evolving from World War I Veterans Coliseum to Oodles of Noodles Park, and then again to the Tampax Thunderdome. I’ve also grown comfortable with the fact that every college bowl game is now the Huggies Baby Wipes Rose Bowl brought to you by Thompson’s Anal Beads.1 I even say “Altria” instead of “Philip Morris”, even though that was a cynical rebrand to hide the fact that that company killed more members of the Greatest Generation than Hitler and Tojo combined. I really don’t care; those are all at least words that I can say with my English-speaking mouth.
But I hit a wall when I’m asked to say or write something that isn’t a word. And yes, I’m talking about Prince, God rest his funky soul. For five years in the ‘90s, he was known as…fuck, even now I can’t type it…his name was a symbol for five years, you remember that. But there was no way to express that symbol phonically, nor did a keyboard exist anywhere in the world that could type it. Even now, 30 years after the fact, in a world with smartphones, AI, and holograms, in which any 13 year-old with a MacBook could auto-generate Prince’s entire catalogue, when I google “how do I type the Prince symbol?”, the first result is “download the Prince font!”. I am not going to download the fucking Prince font! Stop making my life hard, Prince! I’ll call a person whatever they want as long as they don’t make me download a special font package just to type their fucking name!
Twitter’s switch to “X” is similar. “X”, you see, already has a place in the English language: It’s a letter, a phonic expression that means “formerly”, and a symbol in math that connotes an unknown variable. When I type it, it looks like I wrote “X” as a placeholder and then forgot to circle back and fill in the thing. That’s a problem on a blog where typos are already something of a signature flourish. If I say “X owner Elon Musk,” the listener thinks “ex-owner of what?”, because “x” already means something in English. The dictionary definition of a “word” is “a speech sound that communicates a meaning”, but Elon chose a speech sound that communicates nothing because it contains multiple meanings, which means that the new name fails my simple “I’ll say it as long as it’s a word” test.
When you consider “X” as a verb, the situation becomes totally unworkable. It makes sense for people on Twitter to send tweets; “tweet” was even named the 2009 word of the year by that shadowy cabal that controls the world: The American Dialect Society. But what do people on X send? Xweets? Fuck you — I will never say “xweets”. Try to pronounce “xweets” — your tongue will try to commit suicide by jumping out of your mouth. It enrages me that anyone would ask grown men and women to say “xweet” — we are human beings with dignity, we’re not going to debase ourselves by using faux-Welsh bullshit words just because a billionaire says that we should! It’s not my fault that Elon dropped too much acid and came up with a terrible name, and I’m not going to start heeding the dictates of junkies just because they also happen to be rich.
It’s interesting that this bit of linguistic terrorism came from a right-wing figure that most left-ish people hate. Usually, the left are the ones bullying people into using new words. The constant reworking of the English language has long been a salient feature of the progressive left: Steven Pinker coined the term “euphemism treadmill” in 1994, and linguist Sharon Henderson Taylor was discussing the concept as far back as the ‘70s. Using correct, up-to-the-minute words in a progressive environment is a way to gain status: No normal human would know to say “person experiencing unhoused status” instead of “homeless”, but if you nail that verbal triple backflip in a progressive space, then you’ve established yourself as something of an Alpha Weenie to be reckoned with.
Some of these linguistic updates are good. “Gypped” is racist and “ripped off” works just as well, so that’s an improvement. Same with “Inuit” instead of “Eskimo” — Eskimo is a word that other people used for Inuits, so it would be like if we still called Austrian people “Huns”. Other changes seem pointless but harmless: I don’t understand why “office manager” is preferable to “secretary”, or why “disabled” is better than “handicapped”, but whatever: The new words work as well as the old words, so…sure.
But some “improvements” just don’t work. “Latinx” — aside from being a word imposed on Latin people against their will — can only be pronounced stupidly or awkwardly.2 “Person experiencing unhoused status” is just too long. And, of course, there’s using “they” to refer to a single person, which I do when asked, but I’ll admit: I don’t love it. It’s confusing — “they” is a plural word, simply declaring it to be singular doesn’t really work. Then again, it’s infinitely better than the “ze/zim/zir” nonsense to which I will absolutely not acceed, so I guess I have to pick my battles.
Anyone trying to drag humanity into a Brave New World of Words should have practicality as their first criterion. Which is basically the same criterion that applies to all new ideas: If you want an idea to catch on, then it has to actually be good. “X” is not a good name for a social media platform, and I’ll only start using it if and when saying “Twitter” starts to sound like saying “Rhodesia” or “colored”. And if Elon wanted faster, more widespread acceptance, then he should have picked a name that’s an actual fucking word.
“Thompson’s — what’s up your ass?“
“Latinx“, rhymes with “sphynx”, sounds dumb — that’s a cartoon noise. And “Latinx”, rhymes with “satin flex”, sounds like Malcolm X’s non-union Mexican equivalent.
To me, "Latinx" is especially stupid because it's trying to solve the confusion created because English ditched the concept of grammatical gender somewhere about 1000 years ago. Thus, we already have a gender neutral version of "Latino": "Latin".
I have compromised by calling it Xitter*. The unit of communication becomes Xiiit which pleases me because it also captures the quality and tone of the content (oops, nearly typed xontent).
But - a note to you uncultured leftpondians - it is not mandatory that nouns are capable of being "verbed". In fact that is the original crime against the English language that resulted in the British Empire's decision to let the American colonies fend for themselves.