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For just a brief moment , this was the net at its good . I stared at a vase of dried out Trader Joe ’s flowers , grumble on my table for perchance 30 second , but I was too appalled to even process what was happening . Then I saw the tweets ( which , in this import of shock , I reject to callX posts ) .
“ DID WE JUST HAVE AN EARTHQUAKE IN NEW YORK ? ”
“ was that an earthquake ? ? ? ? ? ? ”
“ did everyone just feel that ? ”
“ THIS IS ONE OF THE reason I go AWAY FROM CALIFORNIA ”
“ So excited that us east coaster can finally get temblor Twitter ”
hoi polloi on microblogging site ( it wasn’tjustX — I see you , Bluesky ) had already determined the compass of the earthquake , confirmed itwas , in fact , an earthquake , and began posting prank about the situation before the less inveterate on-line people even realise what materialize .
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It ’s uncommon that something happens so on the spur of the moment that it unifies an entire geographic region — people from New Jersey , Philadelphia , New York City and Massachusetts chime in on my timeline , each unabashedly share our experience . It ’s like the old school Twitter , where you could post “ rust a ham and cheese sandwich ” and it was n’t ironic . You were invited to say exactly how you felt , and everyone else was doing it too . It ’s like previous LiveJournal or Facebook status , where you could place “ is feeling sleepy ” and never consider that no one really care .
It ’s like a middle schooltime cafeteria , hours after an unplanned fire alarm pass off . We ’re all still buzz with a sure naive turmoil and awe , bouncing off of each other ’s surprise and exaggerating our remembering of what happened , like it was some legendary case . Everyone has lost focus at work . On Slack , Ron say he cogitate it was a train , and his chair shake a little . Matt articulate that in California , it usually feels like a railroad car smash . Dom says she used to live in LA , and this was definitely an earthquake . Brian enunciate , as a Californian on the East Coast , he did n’t even sense it . Then I portion out my own riveting account of this abbreviated second we all just experience : I thought it was my neighbor ’s lavation machine .
When Elon Musk bought Twitter , and critics embark on a passel exodus to platform like Bluesky , Mastodon , Tumblr , and even ones that no longer exist , like Pebble , we mourn the end of an era . There used to be just one option for microblogging , and it was Twitter , unless you were really into overt germ federated software before 2022 . Moments like these show that there really is value in the “ public township square ” — it ’s a mode for us to know that we are n’t half-baked , or our boiler is n’t exploding , before anyone even know what ’s going on .
But when the most populous townsfolk square is becoming actively more hostile to people who are n’t crypto bros or Tesla stockholders , we get a sense of what we ’re missing . On Threads , people are talking about cherry blossoms . On Facebook , I am delighted to take there is a new grocery store come to my neighborhood , but no one is talking about the earthquake .
As a womb-to-tomb East Coaster , I experienced something I ’ve never felt before as the ground sway beneath me . And straightaway , scroll through my Twitter provender , I mat up nostalgic for what the cyberspace gives us at its best : a sense of serene , comfort , camaraderie and reassurance that I was n’t alone .
