Guest Editorial by BaconMan (Reposted from BaconBitsShow.com)
Constantly, and mistakenly, attributed to Ernest Hemingway Twitter should hang the quote from a John Donne poem on every wall in their offices:
“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Last night on the Bacon Bits Show Daddy Warpig told me of his intention to leave the service and this only a week after he scored his biggest interview in Adam Baldwin. One of Twitters power-users and certainly one of the most informative and entertaining accounts in my feed Daddy Warpig will be missed. His near encyclopedic knowledge of science fiction literature and films coupled with his love of video games and keen insight into all of these things made him a must-read for me and more than 8,000 other Twitter users.
Citing vague personal “Real Life” issues and remaining tight lipped on his reasons for deleting all his tweets and leaving the service he will certainly invite speculation from some that his abrupt departure has, at the very least, been hastened by Twitters increasingly hostile behavior towards users that don’t agree with the companies left wing politics.
This would be conjecture, of course, because Warpig hasn’t said Twitters behavior caused him to leave but the inference is impossible not to make. As he is currently downloading an archive of his tweets and preparing to kill his account there will be many who see it as no coincidence that this comes at a time when Breitbart has confirmed the existence of “shadow bans”, specifically referencing Daddy Warpig in the article, and at a time when Jack has formed a Trust and Safety Council and stacked the deck with SJWs.
Even should this speculation prove baseless and Warpigs departure ultimately be unrelated to these issues Twitter has no one to blame but itself for the correlation, if not causation, between a beloved user nuking his account and the increasingly erratic behavior of its management. In recent weeks Twitter has publicly taken counsel from leftists agitators like Randi Harper and famed radical feminist Anita Sarkeesian. While it’s long been speculated that behind the scenes the lunatics were running the Twitter asylum the company has now pulled back the curtains and revealed whose advice it considers important; the fact that the opinions of those in charge who wish to silence GamerGate or anyone else who disagrees runs counter to many of the services power-users seems lost on Jack.
And while Warpig’s loss is a blow to many of his fans I am not sure it will be the start of a mass exodus from the service. For starters there isn’t a competing site that functions even remotely as well. To be sure there is a market for that and eventually some enterprising programmer will come up with one. But for now Twitter is banking on the same psychological principle that many cable providers count on: you’re lazy.
A long time ago a brilliant marketer did several studies and discovered something interesting about consumer behavior: A customer who is talked into a “bundled” service is drastically less likely to switch providers. If, for example, a customer uses only Time Warner Internet service there is a very good chance that at some point he may try switching. However, once that same person adds a phone line to the service and calls it a “bundle” he deems it too much of a hassle to switch. Customer retention rates for people in bundled services are astronomically higher than those who use only select services from a provider.
Twitter knows that switching services would be a pain, especially for people like Warpig who would have to “refriend” more than 8,000 people, many of whom would not be embracing a new service making it likely he would have to run two accounts, one on each service.
But since this is the first user I would consider a “power user” to leave voluntarily, and since some accounts are one misstep away from a ban, it does leave users wondering how long the service can continue this self-destructive behavior before it becomes unusable. Banishment hangs like the Sword of Damocles over the head of The Ralph Retort everyday and most still think the un-verification of the wildly popular Milo Yiannopoulos was only the opening salvo of what will be Twitters attempt to banish him entirely.
I shit you not, people.
Haters actually got my cat suspended from Twitter.
Godspeed, @KingTutTheManx.
— Ethan Ralph (@TheRalphRetort) February 1, 2016
As for Daddy Warpig, he will continue in his current role on the Bacon Bits show for the foreseeable future and that’s where you can go for your Warpig fix. He will also continue his popular Geek Gab podcast, which is always worth a listen. I have appeared on that show previously and probably will again. I’m not one of those guys who meets people online and never in person and calls everyone “my friend” but Warpig is one of the tiny group of online personalities I would put in that category. For me, I will miss his account greatly and count myself fortunate that I will get the chance to speak with him weekly during my show. If you haven’t already head over to the Warpig account and wish him well before it goes dark, probably in the next day or so.
