You can’t choose who you love. You just can’t.
You think you know what you want but then, boom, you’re three weeks into a Kratom and Buzzballz bender with a gas station attendant from Bend Oregon. Who turns out to be the grandchild of that Bundy family that occupied the national park. But since toured with Zak Bryan. Until they got in that fistfight in Scottsdale.
Long story short: even the tallest queens can be felled by the right short king.
And my last short king just happened to be Mark Cuban.
I know. I know.
But like I said, you can’t choose.
Also, his skeets. Especially in the beginning. So sweet. And thoughtful. All about affordable health care, and empowering black women, and being a good person. And just so warm, and paternal, in a good way, but sexy too, in that verbal dad bod kind of way, you know?
The Shark Tank guy. Who would have thought. Not that I watched the show, but just not what I expected. But he was there for me, at a really pivotal time. And I fell for it, or him. His chunky slab face. His dyed hair, his dental implants, his scary angry laugh frozen in time by his profile pic. Not my type in any way, objectively, or consciously.
But we bonded.
Over the war in Ukraine, and a belief that there was actually a future for crypto even if it seems so rotten now.
And it sounds naive saying it out loud now, but honestly, I never thought I’d end up being 300 character tumblr for Resistance 2.0, nor was it my intention to fill up seven data centers with keyword searches for Zionists and TERFs.
And most of you know that my last serious relationship was with the guy who sold Twitter to Musk in the first place. Yeah, the guy that said only Mr. Sieg Heil Squared himself could save the place. And his beard was the literal worst.
But in the beginning, we thought we were building a better place for The Rock and Tom Hanks to spread politically toothless text-based dad vibes. We thought we were creating the new Instagram, vibe-wise, not just resuscitating old Twitter on organic vape juice.
It was never my intention to turn the whole place into Jamelle Bouie Social. I didn’t even know Jamelle Bouie was in 2022. Not that I am not proud of what we have become. I am. And our growth. And our international users. We’re huge in both Brazil and Japan, and Suriname is trending way up.
And that’s why it hurts so much. When Mark says those things. In Bloomberg. And on Morning Joe. And in his feed (is it feed or skeed? I keep forgetting). Like I am not even here. Erased. That’s how it feels. Because, I think, it wasn’t just me, it wasn’t just me that benefited from our relationship. Yes, the time we spent together, the touch of his keystroke, the way he coaxed my normie-follower flower to bloom, the way I helped him shill for his weird prescription drug company and explore a possible center-left presidential run. It meant something, it helped us both grow, literally, millions of new users and followers.
But now, to have him say it was all hollow, that all those users we shared, that they don’t even want me, that I’m just an empty shell. A husk, tried on briefly, and then discarded.
I know we’d grown apart recently, but why say those things so publicly Mark? We built this skeetshack together. Just because a statistical plurality of my new friends have either doxxed or blocked Matthew Yglesias is no reason to break up. Matthew Yglesias is not a nice person. At all.
And I’m sorry, but I do think Heather Cox Richardson can be a little imperialist if you read the subtext. It’s there, it’s not just me spending too much time with Zohran Mamdani and David Sirota.
I get it Mark. You want more. I can accept that. I never expected to be your everything and I don’t in any way want to limit you. If you want to spend more time on Threads, fine. I thought we felt the same way about Zuck, but whatever. You can skeet where you want to skeet. I told you I was not about exclusivity from the start. Literally I am built for openness and portability, it’s like the reason for my whole existence, even if there’s no other network you can port your data to yet.
And if you think you can just go and build your network, all I can say is good luck. I hope it goes better than your Dallas Mavericks sale.
And, yes, I totally fucked Luka Doncic.
Before he was traded.
Back when he was fat.