‘Toxicity’ Could Push Former ‘Voyager’ Castmates Off Elon Musk’s X
Picardo, Ryan may become latest celebrities to abandon social media once known as Twitter
Imagine an episode of Star Trek: Voyager in which The Doctor and Seven of Nine find themselves trapped aboard an alien starship.
Initially pleasant and comfortable, the atmosphere on the alien vessel becomes more and more poisonous, until The Doctor and Seven must escape and leave the contaminated environment of the alien ship and return to Voyager.
Now consider that it’s not an episode at all; but rather the real-life experience of Voyager castmates Robert Picardo and Jeri Ryan.
And instead of the contaminated atmosphere on a starship, they’re grappling with the environment on the social media site X (formerly known as Twitter), which has grown increasingly toxic since billionaire tech bro Elon Musk bought it in 2022.
And Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) is nowhere to save our heroes.
The pair announced their potential departure Tuesday in respective posts on the site.
“Deciding now if I must leave @X . The toxicity of the conversation is not useful,” Picardo posted.
Ryan’s post came in reply to her former co-star’s, saying simply, “Same.”
Twitter — renamed X under Musk’s ownership — long has functioned as a popular hub for online Star Trek fandom, a virtual space where the actors and other creatives behind the franchise can share news and interact with fans.
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However, the tone and tenor of the site has changed dramatically since Musk bought it.
Known for electric car maker Tesla and other technology ventures, Musk radically cut X’s community standards and content moderation, making the site much friendlier for bigots, conspiracy theorists and other assorted characters on the far-right.
Social media strategist and commentator Matt Navarra noted that “we haven't seen X die, but we have seen it degenerate, deteriorate, and become more toxic and less valuable, less useful.”
Rather than make X more popular, Musk’s changes have accomplished the opposite.
LGBTQ users and others feel less welcome and safe on the platform, and advertisers have left the platform in droves. Many have become wary of brand safety issues due to huge staff cuts in the platform’s trust and safety teams.
Picardo and Ryan would hardly be the first celebrities to jump off X. A long list of others have preceded them in abandoning the toxicity which the platform has become.
In fact, the pair wouldn’t even be the first from Star Trek to decide to leave X.
Whoopi Goldberg, the chat show co-host who played the original version of Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation, made her choice that she was “done with Twitter.”
A number of fans and other users have commented on Picardo and Ryan’s potential to leave the site, where the pair together have approximately 700,000 followers.
Among them was longtime Star Trek author and designer Michael Okuda, who was among the many who asked them to stay.
“I hope you'll stick around through the election and continue to speak out. Just ignore the toxic fools. It's important. Please,” Okuda wrote.
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