Twitter has been rebranded as X, and a lot of people hate the new moniker. There have been widespread complaints that “X” is so generic that it’s unsearchable, in addition to arguments that Elon Musk is walking away from the kind of international name recognition that most corporations would sell their own shareholders to obtain.
Author Stephen King is one critic determined to shut his eyes, click his heels together, and say the former name of the social media site over and over in hopes that he can magically return to a time before Musk’s giant 12-year-old face became synonymous with the company:
Some users seem to agree with the best-selling author:
Others seem to have grown tired of King’s defiance. Though, it’s difficult to surmise if they actually like the name “X” for the platform — which is definitely what a fifth-grader with no friends would name a website — or if they just want to be invited to Musk’s next party.
Give us a moment to appreciate the final tweet (or the final X, X-message, X-change??), where Laura Hall imagines a world where King actually cares that he might lose one single reader over this conflict. Still, our favorite response is this one:
That’s right. Someone has decided this is the appropriate forum for telling King to stop using children in his stories because it’s “weird.” The author of Carrie, The Shining, IT, Firestarter, Cujo, Pet Sematary, The Institute, and The Dark Tower series — which all include narratively crucial, well-developed characters below the age of 18 — has henceforth been forbidden by someone who hashtags “irrelevant” from writing any character under the legal drinking age until he dies.
This is the kind of thing we’ll miss reading as X continues to fail and more people leave the platform. Time will tell if Stephen King will be part of the X-odus — which isn’t a bad title for a book that is definitely about adults and no one else.
