When moving on is difficult

Photo by Marcus Reubenstein on Unsplash

Three years on from its rechristening, I still can’t use the name X without adding an apologetic mumble of Twitter. It’s not just because I’m barely on the platform any more, nor is the explanation needed much these days. But X somehow sounds silly - even a little pretentious - so I end up dragging the old name along behind it like a caption. The question is: why do I find this so hard whilst readily embracing other word changes? It’s my job after all: to monitor a language that is shifting beneath my feet even as I stare at it. I’ll happily accept that ‘google’ is now a verb, that ‘literally’ can mean anything but, that any use of the word ‘cool’ – the one adjective I assumed any generation could use – now elicits a teenage eyeroll. And yet, years into Twitter‘s rebrand, my brain is still refusing to let a dead name lie. When did I become so stubborn? Judging by a question from one of my followers here on Substack, I’m not alone, and so rather than dismissing it as the resistance that comes with age, I’ve considered it a little more.

I already knew that a familiar word isn’t simply a label you can peel off in a whim. Every item in our private ‘wordrobes’ is a collection of associations, memories, and experiences developed over years of use. I loved Twitter once, and the name still carries a reassurance that its current incarnation no longer provides. Swerving the new X keeps things tied to a particular era as well as a particular feeling. With my linguistic hat on, I could add the fact that Twitter came with a ready-made verb, to ‘tweet’, and I enjoyed this new sense that grew up alongside it. X offers none of that. The letter may not seem arbitrary in the context of Elon Musk’s empire, but to me its use feels semantically empty.