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| Three dudes and a dream that'll never come true. Yep. |
[WARNING: This post barely discusses soccer, MLS or otherwise. You’ve been warned, everything after this is on you.]
I’ve been on Twitter long enough to forget how I used to promote posts to a larger public. True story. I know BigSoccer played a role at some point…speaking of, if you wanna see a dead body, visiting BigSoccer is the online equivalent of walking through a graveyard with all the graves dug up and the caskets open.
I doubt Conifers & Citrus could have worked without Twitter. I’m not entirely sure it will work without it, but I’m about to find out.
Like millions of people – a phrase I use with confidence for the first time, btw – I’ve been mulling deleting my twitter since Elon Musk bought it, near as I can tell, as the self-driving car of toilet paper. It’s less stupid than it was last spring, aka, the parade of bad ideas/threats that went on for months – don't know about you, but my first personal “fuck this” came with his two-day experiment with limiting the number of tweets non-subscribers could send or send – but fall roughed it up in its own way, maybe one that’s worse. To strain a metaphor…
I haven’t closed down a bar since my 20s (fine, mid-30s), but Twitter Musk.0 has recreated a Bizarro version of the experience. Some form of desperation defined Twitter from Day 1, obviously, but the tang of it stings the nostrils a little more with each passing week. Over half the likes I get lately come from – I don’t know, bots? lazy marketing for dating/soft-porn sites? – and 75% of the ads sell a slurry of crypto-currency, life-/investment coaching, and the kind of weird shit they used to advertise on late-night TV to lonely people with diminished impulse control. Unlike a bar, Twitter works to keep you in, not kick you out - and they do it appealing to your most lizard-brained fantasies...depressing, comes to mind…
I’ve been on Twitter long enough to forget how I used to promote posts to a larger public. True story. I know BigSoccer played a role at some point…speaking of, if you wanna see a dead body, visiting BigSoccer is the online equivalent of walking through a graveyard with all the graves dug up and the caskets open.
I doubt Conifers & Citrus could have worked without Twitter. I’m not entirely sure it will work without it, but I’m about to find out.
Like millions of people – a phrase I use with confidence for the first time, btw – I’ve been mulling deleting my twitter since Elon Musk bought it, near as I can tell, as the self-driving car of toilet paper. It’s less stupid than it was last spring, aka, the parade of bad ideas/threats that went on for months – don't know about you, but my first personal “fuck this” came with his two-day experiment with limiting the number of tweets non-subscribers could send or send – but fall roughed it up in its own way, maybe one that’s worse. To strain a metaphor…
I haven’t closed down a bar since my 20s (fine, mid-30s), but Twitter Musk.0 has recreated a Bizarro version of the experience. Some form of desperation defined Twitter from Day 1, obviously, but the tang of it stings the nostrils a little more with each passing week. Over half the likes I get lately come from – I don’t know, bots? lazy marketing for dating/soft-porn sites? – and 75% of the ads sell a slurry of crypto-currency, life-/investment coaching, and the kind of weird shit they used to advertise on late-night TV to lonely people with diminished impulse control. Unlike a bar, Twitter works to keep you in, not kick you out - and they do it appealing to your most lizard-brained fantasies...depressing, comes to mind…
…then came the ghoulish horror about and around the Gaza war, aka, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand for my decision to get off the platform. My opinions on the conflict pretty much start and end with, it’s fucking tragic, answering a war crime with war crimes, etc. – and that has a lot to do with being alive for everything after the hot wars (e.g., the 1973 Arab-Israeli War). I know the history well enough, and I don’t care what side you come down on: it’s less the fact people took sides than the way they took them that I don't want to see anymore, at least not in ticker-tape form.
And yet I created Bluesky account and followed so many of the same people. Which feels like stumbling to the emptier bar down the street before closing time for one last pointless pint. (Find me! I’ll definitely pass out on top of you! Who knows? I might even puke on your bed!)
And yet I created Bluesky account and followed so many of the same people. Which feels like stumbling to the emptier bar down the street before closing time for one last pointless pint. (Find me! I’ll definitely pass out on top of you! Who knows? I might even puke on your bed!)
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| No one gives a shit! No nickel for you! |
To close out the sub-text of the Gaza War thought, the weirdest thing Twitter did to my brain was convince me that I had to, not just have, but voice an opinion on…just far too many events and subjects. That applied to this site, to some extent - e.g., the Iron Front bullshit, the Pat Riley/Thorns bullshit, the Andy Polo/Timbers bullshit, etc. I haven't changed my mind on any of those things, so much as I question the point of posting them to a flyweight (with weights on the ankles) site/twitter. And that's the point: Twitter dials the temptation to weigh in to fucking 11. Throw in a basic (or imagined) knowledge of the subject/event and you’re flirting with 15, maybe even higher, and before you know it, you're posting a black square on Instagram only to be told it's cringe and how very totally fucking wrong you're doing it just eight hours later. At my best, I spouted off less than linked to articles I found useful or clarifying – hell, I even tried to live-tweet a couple books I’ve read (American Nations, to name one) – but, as anyone who followed my twitter knows, the Trump years, and the Christian Nationalism that fuels it, had and still has me clawing the walls.
That’s enough sad shit. Time to turn this funeral into a wake, dammit!
Timbers Twitter still recaptures the magic now and then, even with the rot, but it takes something stupid or sentimental for the inspiration to really kick in these days (so, not Phil Neville’s hiring). That, more than literally anything else, kept me on Twitter for as long as I lasted. I backed into a real community within months of creating my twitter and playing in that space, even when it was just online footsie, didn’t just keep this project going, it made it fun and somehow worthwhile. That community survived for a some years, too, most of it even made it through the pandemic (though I sense that the death of a guy who posted as “Rusted Traveler” punched a hole through it). I’m just happy I got to be some part of it.
Between this site and the twitter, I was lucky enough to meet a couple dozen people in the real world and that was even better. The semi-infamous PTFC Collective/Portland Timbros thing was my entre into most of that, but I met some other people here and there (where both “here” and “there” mean bars) and I found putting names to faces oddly satisfying.(I still bowl with one of the original (probably?) Timbros, fer crissakes.) Anyway, I'm generally up for coming out to say hello to most people and I mostly say yes when I asked (though I did once miss a couple watch parties in the Bethany neighborhood and I missed too many invites to the Mad Greek Deli to count). The only caveat: I’m probably older than you think and I’m likely as not to spend most of the time we’re talking asking about anything but soccer.
Oddly enough, that returns the conversation to Twitter. Toxic as I found (and still find) the impulse to have…opinions, a big part of me liked (and, apparently still likes; see Bluesky) having a soapbox under my feet. Being able to post anything that popped into my head, first at 160 characters, then 280 (and, once I discovered Twitter threads, to infinity! (and somehow back again on Bluesky) was the real magic on that particular iteration of the attention-economy. With some inevitable proportion of presentation baked in, and everyone but actual sociopaths and people trying to monetize the platform excepted, most people’s twitters are basically a lightly edited version of who they are. On the one hand, sure, every start-up in Silicon Valley knows I’m going to fart 0.5 seconds before I do (hell, with how close they monitor us, they might have completed this sentence), but it has been oddly satisfying to get to know some version of so many people for as long as I’ve had a twitter. That’s half reminiscing and half free advice, for what it’s worth..
As noted both above and several times on twitter, I’m going to lean into Bluesky and Reddit to keep this site (my form of) viable going forward. For anyone who’s interested, the Bluesky is snackyd.bsky.social and I’m on Reddit at u/Conifers-n-Citrus. To be clear, I do want to keep this going, even if I’m working out how to make that happen. That’s also another subject for another post…and, again, Reddit makes that harder than twitter does…just…having to post to this or that subreddit, when you want to tell your beautiful, amazing, mind-blowing (also, it’s 1:30 in the morning and you’re screaming high) story with the entire, motherfucking world!
No, I’ll get used to it. I will. Probably. Perhaps intermittently.
To anyone who thinks it’s weird that I’ve gone this far into the post without actually talking about the Portland Timbers, I suppose my response would be, that’s why this site exists. My twitter and this site exist for different reasons…with allowances for the fact I’m pulling the plug on the twitter. Consider this my first twitter post on Conifers & Citrus, and may it never happen again.
That’s enough sad shit. Time to turn this funeral into a wake, dammit!
Timbers Twitter still recaptures the magic now and then, even with the rot, but it takes something stupid or sentimental for the inspiration to really kick in these days (so, not Phil Neville’s hiring). That, more than literally anything else, kept me on Twitter for as long as I lasted. I backed into a real community within months of creating my twitter and playing in that space, even when it was just online footsie, didn’t just keep this project going, it made it fun and somehow worthwhile. That community survived for a some years, too, most of it even made it through the pandemic (though I sense that the death of a guy who posted as “Rusted Traveler” punched a hole through it). I’m just happy I got to be some part of it.
Between this site and the twitter, I was lucky enough to meet a couple dozen people in the real world and that was even better. The semi-infamous PTFC Collective/Portland Timbros thing was my entre into most of that, but I met some other people here and there (where both “here” and “there” mean bars) and I found putting names to faces oddly satisfying.(I still bowl with one of the original (probably?) Timbros, fer crissakes.) Anyway, I'm generally up for coming out to say hello to most people and I mostly say yes when I asked (though I did once miss a couple watch parties in the Bethany neighborhood and I missed too many invites to the Mad Greek Deli to count). The only caveat: I’m probably older than you think and I’m likely as not to spend most of the time we’re talking asking about anything but soccer.
Oddly enough, that returns the conversation to Twitter. Toxic as I found (and still find) the impulse to have…opinions, a big part of me liked (and, apparently still likes; see Bluesky) having a soapbox under my feet. Being able to post anything that popped into my head, first at 160 characters, then 280 (and, once I discovered Twitter threads, to infinity! (and somehow back again on Bluesky) was the real magic on that particular iteration of the attention-economy. With some inevitable proportion of presentation baked in, and everyone but actual sociopaths and people trying to monetize the platform excepted, most people’s twitters are basically a lightly edited version of who they are. On the one hand, sure, every start-up in Silicon Valley knows I’m going to fart 0.5 seconds before I do (hell, with how close they monitor us, they might have completed this sentence), but it has been oddly satisfying to get to know some version of so many people for as long as I’ve had a twitter. That’s half reminiscing and half free advice, for what it’s worth..
As noted both above and several times on twitter, I’m going to lean into Bluesky and Reddit to keep this site (my form of) viable going forward. For anyone who’s interested, the Bluesky is snackyd.bsky.social and I’m on Reddit at u/Conifers-n-Citrus. To be clear, I do want to keep this going, even if I’m working out how to make that happen. That’s also another subject for another post…and, again, Reddit makes that harder than twitter does…just…having to post to this or that subreddit, when you want to tell your beautiful, amazing, mind-blowing (also, it’s 1:30 in the morning and you’re screaming high) story with the entire, motherfucking world!
No, I’ll get used to it. I will. Probably. Perhaps intermittently.
To anyone who thinks it’s weird that I’ve gone this far into the post without actually talking about the Portland Timbers, I suppose my response would be, that’s why this site exists. My twitter and this site exist for different reasons…with allowances for the fact I’m pulling the plug on the twitter. Consider this my first twitter post on Conifers & Citrus, and may it never happen again.
And, yeah, that's all the wrote. To borrow a line from Serial (a 1980 movie about the 1970s; a Martin Mull/Tuesday Weld/Christopher Lee/Sally Kellerman/One of the Smothers Brothers/The Guy Who Played the Shrink on the First Newhart, and Still Plays a Shrink joint), “Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, it’s been a slice.
Speaking as an old-fart reader of yours, I never noticed your postings on Twitter, but have read your Reddit posts and comments. So, if you quit the big X, I'll survive nicely. Anyway, you are meant for long-form writing - like this blog.
ReplyDeleteSurprising moment- This morning's USA Network broadcast of Spurs/Newcastle had Robbie Earle (ex-Timbers analyst) paired with Phil Neville (yes, our coach) doing commentary with Rebecca Lowe. Phil seems to know how to talk on-camera about football. He can talk the talk; can he walk the walk?