New social network “Bubble” launched

The launch was announced today of a new social networking site named “Bubble”.

'We’re aware that many people have been leaving Twitter/X since Elon Musk took over,” said Bubble’s CEO Jimmy Schmaltz, “citing the number of opinions they were seeing they didn’t agree with.

'Clearly there’s a gap in the market for a social network where people only encounter others with the same political views. And what better name than Bubble?'

Asked whether this didn’t limit the number of potential members, Schmaltz replied, 'Not at all - we envisage not one Bubble but many, along the lines of subreddits. For example, there might be a west coast Bubble, an east coast Bubble, a north London Bubble, and smaller Bubbles within them for Portland, Martha’s Vineyard, Hampstead… it’s really up to the users how much ideological conformity they want to enforce.

'But with any luck, it should be possible to go through life with no idea there’s anyone who disagrees with you, at least until the election results come in.'

Pressed on whether this wasn’t essentially the same as Fox News, speaking only to one narrow segment of the population and not caring that everyone else thinks you’re crazy, Schmaltz said that was just the sort of remark that would get you kicked out of the Silicon Valley Bubble. 

Photo by Marc Sendra Martorell on Unsplash

Elon Musk has a paddy because we’re still calling it Twitter

Multi-billionaire Elon Musk today had a very public meltdown when he heard people still referring to the social media platform he owns as Twitter.

'It’s not like the original name was so great anyway,” said the sulky plutocrat. “I mean, Twitter, seriously? And individual posts are called tweets? It’s stupid.

'My name for it, X, is way better, with posts called… well, I guess they’re still tweets, we didn’t really think that one through. Anyway, it’s my platform so I can call it what I like. And the little people have to fall in line.

'But every time it’s mentioned on the damn news, they say ‘X, formerly known as Twitter’… it’s like they’re telling people not to bother learning the new name.”

Meanwhile, trending on Twitter (sorry, X) was the topic that if Musk wanted to rebrand Tesla cars as “overpriced, impractical vanity purchases that only relocate the pollution to wherever the electricity is generated”, people would be happy to go along with that.

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

Government to tax social media posts

Insiders suggest that, in a shock move, the government will use the October budget to introduce a new tax on social media posts.

Although this may seem unusual, tax experts say governments have always taxed the things people desire or can’t do without.   Long ago, taxes were levied on salt and windows.   More recently, taxes have extended to gambling, aeroplane flights and sugary drinks.  In this context, social media is an obvious and easy way to raise more money.

Insiders suggest the tax could be levied per message, on a sliding scale.  Texts or WhatsApp message would be taxed at a penny a message, rising to two pence if you’ve used emojis and five pence if you’ve used numbers instead of letters – gr8 or l8r, for example.

Posting a photo would be taxed at 5p, affecting Snap and Insta.  Voice notes and videos would be taxed at 25p for short posts and up to £5 for video posts or voice messages that are interminably long.

The justification for the new taxes are three-fold.  Firstly, any reduction in the number of messages will cut the energy used backing up pointless and trivial messages.   Secondly, productivity should improve, as workers will spend less time at work on their phones, and might actually get something done.  Thirdly, they will raise a mega-shed load of money.  The Treasury believe that the tax take could be so big that they could abolish both income tax and VAT.

We’ll believe that when we see it.  Roll on October 30th.