Many, many people all around the world — not just Tauruses — struggle with change. It can be disorienting, scary, uncomfortable, and stressful. This month, the internet faced one of the biggest changes of the 21st century. After business magnate Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022, he informed users that changes were inbound. It seems he followed through with his word as Twitter is currently in the process of rebranding as X.
We’ll chalk this one up to Musk’s apparent obsession with the letter ‘X’ as he initially named his newborn baby X Æ A-Xii Musk — pronounced ‘X.’ Since the name didn’t comply with Californian Law, Musk had the baby’s first name changed to X, making X Æ A-Xii the middle name instead. And now, Twitter as we know it is no more as Musk forces a complete rebrand on the site, which has existed since 2006.
The changes were implemented this past weekend, and Musk even snatched the @X username from the previous owner without permission, changing the website’s official Twitter (or is it now called an ‘X’ account?) to @X rather than @Twitter.
Mark Hamill, our very own Luke Skywalker, pondered the repercussions of such a drastic change, finding himself stumped as to how users should refer to a post on the website, formerly known as a ‘tweet.’ He took to X for answers, asking whether these posts should still be referred to as ‘tweets’ or something else entirely — although we’re not too sure what.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary, which added the verb ‘tweeting’ and the noun ‘tweet’ to its vocabulary back in 2011, commented underneath Hamill’s… tweet (?) to reaffirm the query. There’s no doubt that Merriam-Webster is now wondering whether ‘tweet’ should be removed entirely or simply renamed.
Other users weighed in on the conversation, informing Hamill that no matter what Musk may do to wipe out Twitter’s former image, the verb ‘tweeting’ will live on as the one and only way to describe an upload to the site.
When we consider the possibilities as to what ‘tweeting’ could possibly be changed to, we’re left with ‘X-ing’ and that doesn’t have a nice ring to it, does it? Other suggestions under the same thread mention ‘Xcerpts’ and ‘X-files.’
