It’s no secret that Disney was very interested in buying Twitter back in 2016, but the House of Mouse never went through with the deal. Disney CEO Bob Iger has explained the company’s thinking about Twitter in his new book, The Ride of a Lifetime, and he really speaks for all of its regular users.
Why didn’t Disney scoop up Twitter? The platform is a cesspool of anger that’s helping to make the world a worse place to live with its “nastiness.”
From the New York Times (emphasis ours):
“The troubles were greater than I wanted to take on, greater than I thought it was responsible for us to take on,” he tells me. “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.”
I honestly can’t think of a better tagline for Twitter than “why am I doing this? Why do I endure this pain?.” Any regular user can relate to the question. It’s the same as eating a particularly greasy pizza or something. We tell ourselves that it’s going to be so good and it just leaves us feeling like shit.
Why are we doing this? Why do we endure this pain? Because we’re addicted. And there’s nothing we can do about it. The folks at Disney were smart enough to avoid wading into those Nazi-infested waters.