Hey, A Movie!: The Great Muppet Caper

Boy, I wish I were you people, reading this for the first time.

A wise man once wrote some wise words and added music to make it all flow nicely. The wise man was Joe Raposo, and the wise words were “The first time it happens, you’ll know.” I’m writing these words the Friday before they’re published, and thus the first day since I’ve deleted the Twitter app from my phone. Oh, I’m sorry, the X app, because as we all know, the letter X is very cool and also extreme. You know that because the letter X is the first syllable of that word! Howzabout that?

I won’t waste more than this paragraph to briefly note that — barring a) posting links like this one, and/or b) some magical turnaround like the ownership of Twitter changing hands — that really is it for me and Twitter. And I invoke a lyric from a specific film here (one that has, as I am sure you will note, literally nothing to do with social media) because the first time it happened, I knew. It is easy to talk about using Twitter less (as I have, and many others certainly have), as opposed to actually not using it at all. The first time I knew I had to cut myself loose from it — that it was too untenable to allow myself the easy temptation — was yesterday. Far too long in the offing, yes, but when you see a purportedly respectable polling institution imply that the mugshot of the former president (a loathsome, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and otherwise awful individual) is akin to when Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested for civil disobedience…well, that was it for me. It served as a reminder of the toxicity of the site and also the fact that its owner unblocked said ex-president, enabling the latter to post again. No thanks.

Let us use that encouragement for you to subscribe as a pause. As a refresher. Because while you and I may agree that Twitter has even more of a cesspool than it used to be, and while you and I may be glad to have places like here and Bluesky and Letterboxd to connect, I’m probably going to make you a little annoyed at me today. I may well vex or frustrate you. See, I know that while I can start by referencing a song from a beloved film, and rouse your spirit by talking about how much X sucks, I may lose you when I admit that I like, but do not love, The Great Muppet Caper. And that is why I’ve brought you all together today.