In proof that leaving Elon’s hellhole of a social media site really is best for everyone, Stephen King‘s decision to switch X for one of the defiled bird app’s competitors has ended up being a balm for the soul. Despite being one of the site’s most talkative and heroic celeb users, King elected to join the mass X-odus earlier this week when he jumped ship to Meta’s alternate, Threads. And it’s only taken a couple of days for the horror maestro to make himself at home and become the most wholesome user on the platform.
It all started when a newbie reader looking to get into King’s books asked him which of his many tomes she should start with. Over on X, you’d be lucky to get a like from the celeb you tried that with, but in this case King obliged. “11/23/63,” the man himself replied, surprising everyone by actually answering her question.
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“So you just say Stephen King’s name and he appears?” joked another Threads user, before King hilariously piped up with the perfect response: “Yes.”
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It’s true. King is now everyone’s favorite Threads account because he’s managing to respond to as many of his fans on the app as possible.
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In doing so, King transformed himself into some heartwarming hodge-podge of Mr. Rogers and Beetlejuice (even though that sounds vaguely terrifyingly).
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We already loved King’s X activity, as he tirelessly hit back against Trump’s idiocy and Elon Musk’s ruination of the once-great site, but honestly, the beloved author just turning up in people’s replies to say hi and offering book recommendations are exactly the kind of uplifting online interactions we need right now. It helps that the vibes of Threads and X could not be more different from one another. Whereas Musk-era Twitter is a shouting cesspit of clashing ideologies, Threads harks back to the platform’s early years — when everyone was just excited to have a chance to ask a famous person what they had for lunch.
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It's got to the point where shouting King's name into the Threads void has become like a wholesome version of saying "Bloody Mary" in a mirror. Be warned, it doesn't always work, though. And whatever you do, make sure you're punctuating your posts correctly. You don't want to scare him off.
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Sorry, Musk, but you should just give up on your doomed quest to stamp social media under your boot right now. As one Threads user accurately put it, "This is Stephen King's internet now, and I'm just happy to be here."
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In the wake of the election, users are fleeing X in their droves, with the two most popular alt-platforms being King's choice of Threads and Bluesky, which is where his fellow Muskaphobe Mark Hamill has departed to. King might be giving Michael Keaton a run for his money in becoming the book-recommending Beetlejuice we never knew we needed, but it's Elon who's the ghost with the most... toxic social media site.