Don’t Let X Become the Right’s TikTok

We should not take up the mantle of rage bait and cancel culture

When Elon Musk took over X (formerly Twitter), many conservatives felt like they’d been handed the keys to a long-locked room. After years of technocratic suppression and shadow bans, the self-proclaimed “digital town square” was finally open to free speech, and the right celebrated as though the digital gates to free speech had finally swung open. Musk’s stewardship genuinely expanded that space — but it also transformed the conservative movement itself. Once the right found its own platform, it began repeating the same online habits it used to mock. Because once the right found its own platform, it began repeating the same online habits it used to mock. This is not unique to conservatives. Both major parties are fracturing, and the fault line runs between generations as much as ideologies. Democrats are split between the establishment figures who built their following on cable news and the younger progressives who speak in TikTok clips and Instagram Reels. Republicans, meanwhile, now fight their generational battles on X — a faster, rougher, and far more public arena. (RELATED: America’s New Theology of Violence) The Libs of TikTok Moment The shift began during the Biden administration, when X user Libs of TikTok garnered engagement by reposting the more eccentric corners of progressive Internet culture. Chaya Raichik’s account became a rallying point for conservatives who felt they were simply holding a mirror up to the excesses of “woke” America. That word, “woke,” quickly became both a shorthand and a litmus test. (RELATED: The Group Chat Wasn’t an Anomaly — It Was a Mirror) The viral success of Libs of TikTok proved conservatives could use the left’s media tools to fight back in the cultural arena. Yet it also revealed the same dynamics the right once criticized the left for: an over-reliance on outrage, sound bites, and moral certainty. Just as young progressives police language and preach ideological purity online, young conservatives on X found fresh ground...