In 2016 (pre-election, if you want to join us in a Lost-style “we have to go back!”), the tech industry started to pick up on rumors that Disney was planning to buy a little-known, semi-popular social media website called “Twitter” that had yet to officially be involved in the systematic destruction of global democracy. Any deals that may have been in the works didn’t end up happening, though, leaving us all to wonder if Disney could’ve possibly run Twitter any worse that Twitter has run Twitter.
Now, Disney CEO Bob Iger has given The New York Times an explanation for why he didn’t end up making a deal to buy Twitter (via Deadline), and it’s pretty easy to see where he’s coming from even for us non-CEOs:
The troubles were greater than I wanted to take on, greater than I thought it was responsible for us to take on. There were Disney brand issues, the whole impact of technology on society. The nastiness is extraordinary. I like looking at my Twitter newsfeed because I want to follow 15, 20 different subjects. Then you turn and look at your notifications and you’re immediately saying, why am I doing this? Why do I endure this pain? Like a lot of these platforms, they have the ability to do a lot of good in our world. They also have an ability to do a lot of bad. I didn’t want to take that on.
Honestly? Same. It me. Also: What is Bob Iger posting on Twitter that he’s getting so much hate in his notifications? Does he know he can pretty easily mute that stuff?
The banner image on his profile is kind of a nightmare, with Walt Disney being surrounded by famous Disney characters and also other famous characters that neither he nor anyone in his company had any hand in creating, but the actual feed is just the usual boring bullshit you see on any executive’s page. Like, what is this? How much money does this guy make in a year, and this is what he’s tweeting? You can’t even get ratio’d for stuff like this.
Here’s the real message here: Twitter is so offensively toxic that a guy with an obvious desire to take over the world doesn’t even want to touch it.