Elon Musk, the world's richest cooker, has made Twitter taste terrible

In his quest for free speech, Elon Musk has allowed Right-wing nut jobs, conspiracy theorists and News Corp puppets to dominate our Twitter feeds, writes Darren Crawford.

FOR THE PAST MONTH, my daily Twitter feed has been hijacked by Right-wing commentators from the United States, Great Britain and Australia. I’m not seeing many tweets from the people I follow, my friends or the organisations I am a member of.

All I am getting in my Twitter feed are posts from anti-science, anti-vax, climate-change-denying, MAGA-loving, racist, Right-wing evangelical Christians, conspiracy theorists, sovereign citizens and grifters, and their various media mouthpieces (mainly employed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp) from all over the globe.

And bots. So many bots punching gibberish into people’s replies and retweets.

In Australia, we call these people (and News Corp employees) “cookers”.

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According to Urbandictionary.com, the term “cooker” is:

Australian slang for an anti-vaxxer. They are usually against mask mandates, lockdowns and state/international border closures. Many believe in outlandish conspiracy theories.

Can often be seen posting misinformation on Facebook, telling people to “do your own research” and protesting in the streets against “tyranny” and for freedumb. Often votes for One Nation or United Australia Party, but not always. [One Nation and the United Australia Party are the MAGA equivalent for Australia, but only hold about 7 per cent of the total vote between them.]

Comes from “cooked” which is a more polite version of “f**ked”.

Compare with MAGA in the U.S. or the trucker convoy in Canada.

Sound familiar?

Twitter helped Scott Morrison lose the 2022 Federal Election

Throughout 2021 and 2022, Twitter in Australia as a platform played host to the majority of social media opposition to an extremely dysfunctional conservative government, led by the Liberal-National Party’s Scott Morrison (the Member for Cook). This debacle of a populist government was supported by News Corp, which owns almost 80 per cent of all print media in Australia, as well as the Australian equivalent of the U.S.’s Fox News — Sky News Australia.

Many media analysts in Australia have commented that the Left-leaning “Twitterati” stood in for the lack of balanced journalism in Australia’s print media (thanks to Murdoch), kept the Morrison Government to account and ultimately played a vital role in Morrison losing the 2022 Federal Election to the Australian Labor Party, led by current PM Anthony Albanese.

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In the lead-up to the 2022 Election, independent journalists used Twitter to break through News Corp’s wall of conservative reporting and managed to truthfully report the ongoing mismanagement of the Morrison Government.

In particular, these journalists fought hard to expose the many instances of corruption in the Morrison Government (Sports Rorts, Great Barrier Reef funding and so on), sexual assaults by members of the Government (see former Attorney-General Christian Porter’s rape allegations or Bruce Lehrmann’s trial for the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins) and dodgy international submarine deals (Morrison reneged on a deal with France to provide submarines to the Australian Navy via text message).

In all of these examples, Murdoch’s News Corp either defended the Morrison Government or deflected blame elsewhere, often on the protagonist.

It was here that Twitter came into its own and really flexed its muscles (for good) as a social media platform, holding power to account as independent journalists presented factual evidence without any oversight by conservative sources or sponsors to protect Morrison or his accomplices both in and out of government. And people on Twitter rallied behind them.

But then in late 2022, billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter and everything changed.

Elon Musk is now the “head cooker” at Twitter — and he’s dead set cooked it!

As we are all aware, the former world’s richest man Elon Musk bought Twitter last year and promptly broke the platform.

Not content with just trashing planet Earth’s environment with his dick-swinging “my rocket is bigger than yours” program or “encouraging people to have more children” so that he can sell more useless products, Elon Musk purchased one of the largest social media platforms in the world. In doing so, he almost immediately invited every certified Right-wing nutjob and cooker to the party, before de-platforming any dissenting or independent voices that opposed him (so much for free speech, hey Elon?).

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If you are the richest man in the world, you can afford $60 billion-plus to buy yourself a free speech outlet.

At the same time, he sacked most of his staff that were doing the important stuff — that is, keeping the cookers off the platform.

As a result, for people like me who viewed Twitter as a valid unbiased independent news source (by necessity due to Murdoch’s monopoly of print media in Australia), Twitter is now a hot mess of local and foreign cookers who are constantly on the boil.

In my Twitter feed, hourly, I am getting updates from The Australian (Murdoch’s flagship conservative newspaper in Australia) and snips from the Sky News Australia team (a more intellectually morose group of conservative bobbleheads you will never meet). This crew parrot word-for-word whatever FoxNews in the U.S. is on about, just with an Aussie spin on it.

While we are on Fox, I mean seriously, what is the go with Tucker Carlson? Is he paid by Putin or Murdoch, or both? Is that a parody show or is he for real?

Similarly, this Kyle Rittenhouse kid who shot those people in broad daylight and somehow got away with it — why do I need him in my feed daily, Elon? You know we banned assault rifles in Australia, right?

And what is the go with that Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene shitshow, Elon? Why do you give those two dumb arses constant airtime when they are obviously oxygen thieves of the highest order who have risen way above their station (and intellectual abilities) in life?

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The modern Far-Right has become a world of contradiction and stupidity after being consumed by lies and conspiracy scams.

Finally, I couldn’t give a rat’s about Harry and Meghan and that messed up royal family of inbred Europeans. The whole thing is a Murdoch-driven construct to sell newspapers in Britain and drive clicks to their shitty paywalls elsewhere.

Now, Elon, I want to make it clear here — I don’t follow any of these cookers on Twitter, including you.

So why are they constantly in my Twitter feed?!

Where has Friendlyjordies gone, Elon? Why can’t I see Save Our Spit’s daily posts? Or my mate Mark from up the road?

I can’t see them because you cooked up a split in the algorithm called “For You” which contains nothing “For Me” and is full of cookers!

I can’t see them, Elon, because you’re a cooker and you cooked the joint.

You cooked it that much Trump doesn’t even want back in!

But as we say down here in Australia: cookers gotta cook. Don’t they, mate?

Darren Crawford is a surfer, environmentalist, sports coach/administrator and academic. He is also vice president of Save Our Spit Alliance. You can follow Darren on Twitter @Darrencanplay.