Basil Jarrett | I SURRENDER

AFTER RESISTING the Dark Side for over a decade, it appears that I’ve finally been beaten, broken and battered into submission. Yup. Your favourite social-media-hating Ebenezer Scrooge has finally succumbed to the pressures of Elon Musk’s blue bird, or black and white X at the time of this writing. Well not quite succumbed. More like hoodwinked. Tricked. Duped. Deceived.

It all started when one of my staffers approached me about getting on to Mark Zuckerberg’s newest social media toy, Threads, as it was allegedly leagues ahead of Twitter in some key areas where Musk’s app was deficient. Apparently, Musk had alienated and offended a whole batch of millennials since taking over the company, and his tweet-happy followers were furiously spitting out their French lattes and cancelling their accounts in disgust.

THE PROBLEM WITH TWITTER

To say that Threads is a Twitter clone would be the understatement of the year. So much so that Musk has threatened a lawsuit for trade secrets and intellectual property violations. When I asked why would anyone want to leave Twitter for its infant cousin, I was told that Musk’s decision to limit Twitter’s free accounts to only 600 views each day had upset his loyal following. Of course, you can imagine the look on my face. Only 600 tweets huh? Wow! How devastating this must be.

Obviously, I was not sold. I don’t think I’ve read 600 tweets in my lifetime, much less one day.

Twitter had, in recent months, experienced intense chaos and faced significant backlash and criticism over some of Musk’s new policies. The platform was described as a toxic environment, with hateful, offensive, racist speech being on the rise since the takeover. The decision to reactivate Donald Trump’s Twitter account was also seen as a nail in the coffin. Technical issues and reports of terrible working conditions for staff also created problems for the platform and over 30 million Twitter users were predicted to fly away over the next two years.

So in walks Threads. New, flashy and shiny, and promising to be everything that Twitter no longer was. When the app launched earlier this month, 30 million persons signed up within hours. Converts raved about how slick, intuitive and easy to use it was. But it’s not all roses for the new kid on the block, however. Privacy rights watchdogs have raised important questions and concerns about Threads, as Zuckerberg seeks to lure even more users into its web. Threads, like Facebook and Instagram before it, collects a wide range of personal information such as health and financial records, saved contacts, browsing and search history, location data, purchases and other sensitive info. At least they’re not hiding it as it’s all there in its data privacy disclosure document on the App Store – if you cared enough to read it. Those issues are sufficiently important to cause the European Union to ban Threads, given its more than lax data privacy rules.

THREADS

All this should have been enough to frighten me even further away than even Tik Tok did, but admittedly I was curious. Something about being front and centre for the next big tech battle intrigued me. Was Threads going to be the big disruptor? Or would it sizzle briefly, then fizzle to a drizzle? I wanted to find out so against my better judgement and with tons of peer pressure at my back, I stepped out, did the unthinkable and signed up for a Threads account. And to show just how much guts I had, I signed up with my real name, real birthday, real profile pic and my real phone. No more bigpoppa69 burner account. No more Earl Simmons photos in my display pic. I was going for the whole hog.

JUST ONE CATCH

And then came the catch. To have a Threads account, you needed to be on Instagram. Crap. They got me. After years of dismissing the ‘Gram as God’s gift to time wasters, I was scammed into signing up. In less than one hour, I had undone 15 years of stubborn doggedness by having not one, but two social media accounts. And that’s when my thoroughly satisfied staffer said, “Well sir, if you have these two, you may as well just get a Twitter account and call it a day.” I was silenced because I truly no longer had an excuse.

So there you have it folks. I have given up the fight and have thrown in the towel with not one, not two, but three social media accounts. In all seriousness though, some readers have actually engaged me in the past about some of my columns, and have said they would love to engage with me on certain topics in between columns. So no, I promise not to post pics of my breakfast, lunch or dinner, nor live tweet my trips to the dentist, supermarket or gas station.

Instead, let’s continue our conversations around some of the topics presented in these pages. Should be an interesting adventure. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Threads @IamBasilJarrett.

Major Basil Jarrett is a communications strategist and CEO of Artemis Consulting, a communications consulting firm specialising in crisis communications and reputation management. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Threads@IamBasilJarrett