Social Media Meltdowns: The Rise and Fall of MySpace, the Teetering of TikTok, and the Twitter Apocalypse

<p class="p1">Welcome to the "Social Media Schadenfreude" episode, in which Shane and Duncan delve into the misfortunes of the fortunate.</p> <p class="p1">First up: MySpace, the has-been of the social networking world. Next: TikTok, the latest all-singing/all-dancing/all-spying flavor of the month. And last but not least, the endless stream of drama and chaos that is Twitter, from its beginnings as a 240-character bullhorn to its current incarnation as the pet project of a billionaire in freefall.</p> <p class="p1">~</p> <p>Support the show by becoming a Midnight Minion, Menace, or Maniac, and unlock exclusive bonus content over at <a href='https://www.patreon.com/mffi?fan_landing=true'>PATREON</a></p> <p>~</p> <p>Join the MFFI community and vote on episode topics via <a href='https://discord.gg/4KUWbgj4PN'>DISCORD</a></p> <p>~</p> <p>In this episode:  </p> <ul><li>Primitive Social Media</li> <li>Samuel Finley Breese Morse</li> <li>Morse Code</li> <li>Telegraph Chat Culture </li> <li>The Rise of the Internet </li> <li>BBS</li> <li>CompuServe</li> <li>CB Simulator</li> <li>CBIG and the Rise of Online Dating</li> <li>America Online</li> <li>AOL's Disastrous Merger with Time Warner</li> <li>Classmates.com: The Proto Facebook</li> <li>Sixdegrees.com: The Proto MySpace</li> <li>Friendster: Proto MySpace #2</li> <li>MySpace: The First Juggernaut</li> <li>Tom Anderson, Everyone's Friend</li> <li>Lord Flathead</li> <li>The Top 8</li> <li>News Corp. Acquisition</li> <li>Specific Media and the Justin Timberlake era of MySpace</li> <li>The Ascendence of Zuckerberg </li> <li>Odeo Spawns TWTTR</li> <li>The Founders: Noah Glass, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, & Jack Dorsey</li> <li>Backstabbing and Drama at Early Twitter</li> <li>Twitter's Big Break: SXSW</li> <li>The Myth of Musk</li> <li>The Elon Era at Twitter</li> <li>Crashes and Burnings</li> <li>Trashfires Galore</li> <li>Is There a Rock Bottom?</li> <li>ByteDance Spawns Douyin</li> <li>Douyin Spawns International TikToks </li> <li>Trump v. TikTok</li> <li>Government v. TikT