Musk and the Future of Wine Twitter

The impact on wine when a billionaire buys the birdcage

Elon Musk bought Twitter for a lot of money. There’s no argument about it. He overpaid. But that doesn’t matter. Well, this isn’t quite true. It matters a good deal to shareholders. What matters is that Musk is either saving the world from “wokeists” hopped up on the power to cancel and remove folks from the platform for bad-speak or he is condemning not just Twitter but the entire world to a hellscape that will certainly take down civilization.

None of this matters one bit to the world of wine.

Where wine is concerned, Twitter, like all other social media platforms, has primarily served as a promotional vehicle for producers, retailers, wholesalers, trade associations, and individuals selling something wine related. It is a constantly updating billboard.

I jumped on Twitter 15 years ago. (@tomcwark). Today, I have over 12 “followers”. Like others, I use it almost exclusively to keep folks up-to-date on my consulting activities by promoting the actions my clients have taken and generally helping lift the voice of my clients. I use it to advance the message of a free market in wine too. And I use it to promote this newsletter.

It’s all pretty banal.

For me though, the real value of Twitter is the way in which I’m able to lump the various people I “follow” into lists. I have lists for “Wine Media”, “Wine Regs/Compliance”, “Wine Wholesalers”, “Wine Retailers”, “Napa Wine”, “Oregon Wine” and “Wine Idiots”. By perusing each list, I get a sense of what’s being talked about within each category of wine folks. Sometimes I’m able to pick up news that didn’t come through my Google Searches. I keep up to date with folks I know and what’s on their mind. In this respect, Twitter has been a very important source of intelligence for me.

Yes, there is this thing called “Wine Twitter”. That phrase is most commonly deployed as a slur, and not an unearned one either. It refers, generally, to heated discussions that make those partaking in these discussions look unyielding and ideological. It is not uncommon for a certain cabal of wine folks who stay very connected to the Twitterverse to engage in heated conversations over wine topics that are only of importance to wine folks: wax on bottles, the weight of bottles, and the impact it has on the environment, wine language, racism or sexism in wine, etc. The conversations can often turn toxic and quickly.

How will the change of ownership change all this? Not at all.

No one has ever been banned or suspended from their Twitter account for taking too ardent a stand on the value of the 100-point scale or the three-tier system. And they won’t under Musk. There is no indication that Elon Musk believes advancing a 100-point rating scale amounts to a threat and there is no indication that a critic of the three-tier system shouting from the TwitterTop about this system’s anachronistic status stikes Mr. Musk as an incitement to violence (thank goodness!)

If Mr. Musk decides to invite Mr. Trump back to Twitter (which seems to be the great worry afflicting those who have come to hate Mr. Musk), It won’t affect me in the least. I don’t follow Mr. Trump nor is he a member of any of my carefully curated Twitter lists (though he almost made it onto my “Wine Idiots” list when he bought Kluge Estate and renamed it “Trump Winery”.

Twitter can be a pretty raucous place if you choose to engage with those dark sections of the platform where participants believe a good conversation isn’t over until Hitler is invoked. I’ve had my own run-ins. It’s a weird experience. However, it has helped me fill up my “Wine Idiots” list. And, it has led me to “mute” over 150 different people, which allows them to see my Twitter posts but I don’t have to see their posts (Hey! Everyone ought to have the pleasure of seeing my tweets concerning this newsletter, the three-tier system, wine shipping—otherwise I’d just “block” these folks).

We are stuck with Twitter. It along with FaceBook and Instagram are the new street corners where millions of soap boxes are lined up and the din of voices can be overwhelming. What’s true is that Musk’s purchase of the platform won’t be the end of the world. But that doesn’t mean that Twitter won’t hasten the end of the world.