Written by Kim Regala, Staff Writer
Have a seat, Steve.
Before we begin, we want you to know that we’re only doing this out of pure concern. Concern for you, but most importantly, concern for the recent changes in your Twitter feed, changes to which we are being subjected. This may be painful for you to hear, but we’re your friends, and it hurts us even more.
Ready to listen? Good.
Steve, what you do behind closed doors is entirely up to you. But as soon as you start broadcasting your . . . political alignments for us to see, it’s a whole other level of selfishness.
Just last Tuesday, you retweeted something from CBC News. Now, I’ve come to master the art of swiping past anything with the word “News” on it. I’m basically like Cassandra of Troy but for predicting invasive updates on current events. Just this once, though, I slipped up. There I was. Staring at Justin Trudeau delivering some speech.
I had to binge three hours worth of TikToks afterward, just to rebalance my neurochemistry. All thanks to you.
And this isn’t an isolated incident. I didn’t want to say anything, Steve, but I was the first to notice your problem. Just over a month ago, I saw that you followed . . . The New York Times. At first I told myself that maybe this was just some prank. But, as always, we would have been way better off accepting what we were seeing online at total face value with no further speculation or critical thinking.
Because you really were a Twitter warrior now, Steve. And things escalated quickly as you went from Retweets of news outlets to Tweets of your own. It was so difficult for us to witness your downfall into #cdnpoli.
The worst day was when you started making . . . Threads. At that point, we couldn’t even feel sorry for you, just repulsed. Your very first string of “(1/?)”, “(2/?)”, “(3/?)”, onward was not just a countdown to the end of your socially aware tirade. It was the countdown to disaster — but not one of those cute disasters like earthquakes or hurricanes, the kind we blandly acknowledge in conversation while never donating to relief efforts. It was the disaster of losing a best friend to madness and empathy for others.
Steve, we should have reached out and offered you help right away. I know, and I’m sorry that we didn’t. I’m so sorry — for us. Maybe if I had talked to you when I first caught wind of what was going on, your problem wouldn’t be as bad as it is now, and it wouldn’t now be our problem.
But honestly? I, at least, was in denial. I mean, God forbid we have someone in our friend group who actually pays attention to what’s happening in the world.
I thought you of all people would be the last to ever try and destroy our dynamic like this. But I was so wrong. I guess that’s the one downside of being consistently misinformed, you know. Being wrong every so often.
You’re out of hand, Steve. We don’t think you’re a bad person, but we do think you need a lot of help. We love you, and we just want things back to the way they used to be.
