An open letter to Elon Musk: Leave stan Twitter alone

Elon, baby, you’re feeling bad. You’ve fired 73 percent of Twitter employees, let the site go into disrepair under your oversight, and you’re so desperate to win back $44 billion that you’re turning one of Twitter’s most valuable assets – verification – into a shoddy free-for-all (well yes…$8 for all).

As evening falls and you curl up under the covers and wipe away that crumbling blunt you smoked to sleep the night before, does doubt creep into your head? Ask yourself…what if I made a mistake? (You did.) Is the whole world laughing at me? (Yes). can i save this (Perhaps!)

Coming back from this seems pretty easy (just undo any change you’ve made), but I have one piece of advice you may not have heard: don’t mess with the Stans.

Constantly engaging, always creative, and damn funny, Stan Twitter is one of the biggest fractions of users that you haven’t seem to have pissed off yet. Barbz, Arianators, Swifties, and the Beyhive are powerful foes in almost every arena, but on Twitter, they’re some of your most valuable power users. And don’t forget the K-pop stans wielding crucial power. BTS’ massive army fandom helped the group to assert themselves 17 of Top 30 most liked tweets(Opens in a new tab) in the history. Your tweets, Elon, make… two out.

Here are four reasons why you should leave them alone:

1. They don’t want anything from you

The good folks on Stan Twitter just want a place to scream into the void and post fancams of Timothée Chalamet crying to a Phoebe Bridgers song. You are extremely self-sufficient and want nothing from your platform other than to make it work. In fact, they don’t care about you at all, and if you’re smart, you’ll figure out how to keep it that way.

2. They are critical to the culture of the platform

Stan Twitter is an interaction engine that trends new hashtags, starts new beefs and creates new content formats every hour. Tweeting is a hobby and they do it dozens of times a day. Her vocabulary — words like “fancam,” “lil meow meow,” and “naur” — has permeated online and offline spaces. They ensure Twitter remains a relevant, relatable, and trusted cultural hub.

3. They make Twitter valuable

Stan Twitter’s commitment makes the platform valuable to brands, publications, celebrities and marketing teams. As some of Twitter’s most vocal and engaged users, Stans are driving the platform’s economy and making it a target for advertisers. They lend Twitter its cache as a busy, sometimes hectic place to find and interact with consumers.

4. You will never pay for Twitter

… So don’t try to make them. I’m sure you toss the idea of ​​making users pay to post videos or tweet more than a dozen times a day and I say stop. Not. Cool. Because in the battle between paying for a new album from their darling and paying for Twitter, Stans will choose the album. Every. Singles. Time. Do you think it’s hard to get regular people to pay for Twitter? Trying to get money from someone in a parasocial relationship with a K-pop boy with emotional support. That will not happen.