Is St. Louis Threads as Good as St. Louis Twitter?

You've been hearing about Threads, the new Twitter alternative from Meta, the parent company of old-school social media mavens Facebook and Instagram.

Launched last week, many people flocked to Threads mostly to leave the dumpster fire that is Twitter. Currently, Threads has 100 million sign ons. And St. Louis royalty Nelly joined the fold just yesterday, so St. Louis Threads is officially official. (His first Thread was #STLARMY with the flexing muscle emoji.) But St. Louis Twitter is  hard to replicate. Is Threads a possible contender? Here's what we know.

When joining Threads, it is easy to follow everyone you follow on Instagram, since the two are linked. If your Instagram feed is similar to your Twitter feed, then hopping on Threads will feel similar. But if you're like most people, you'll find your Thread feed  is full of messages from people whose thoughts you don't usually read. It's like hearing your Instagram account. "Shut up and show me photos!" might cross your mind more than once.

After you adjust whom you follow so you can get that St. Louis Twitter feel, even with Nelly, the energy just isn't there yet. You can't report uneven sidewalks and overflowing dumpsters to @stlcsb. You can't get traffic updates from @MoDOTSTLTraffic. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has only created two threads (as of this morning). Sauce Magazine is on there but not threading. (And in the spirit of full disclosure, RFT is still mostly in lurking mode on the app — but follow us anyway @riverfronttimes!)

Huge voices from St. Louis politics are missing: Virvus Jones is not picking fights with alderpeople. But we also couldn't find alderpeople like Cara Spencer or Rahseen Aldridge. Heck, our governor isn't even on there (but Mike Kehoe is, and so are Tishaura Jones and Wesley Bell).

Plus, you'll notice nothing is linked or embedded in this story. That's cause Threads doesn't have a web client or a desktop version of their app. So we can't even share threads in articles without a bunch of hoop jumping. Boo.

So no, Threads is not giving like Twitter is giving. But you should consider joining anyway. (Unless you're one of the troglodytes who populates our comments section. You guys can stay on Truth Social.) That's because social media platforms are fun to join when they're in their early days. No spam, very few bots (but they're there), and like and follow goals feel attainable.

Plus, a lot of the comments on Threads are about the platform itself. People are currently advocating for influencers on the platform to be called knitters and wondering what we should call the messages on Threads. On Twitter, we called them tweets. On Threads we call them? (We are currently advocating for calling them Threats, but for the sake of clarity we just called them Threads here.)

And the vibe on Threads is positive. The most viral thread we've seen so far is one asking if it's OK to recline your seat on a plane, which got more than 1,500 responses. The Whitney Museum has become the platform darling with on point jokes like, "Threads is my favorite social media platform because no one here has ever made me cry." It later added: "This is not an invitation to try to make me cry." Or "Omg guys I'm not an intern," after the account started to become popular and people kept saying that the social media intern at the Whitney was doing a great job.

There are lots of issues with Threads and the right-wing rage complex is already crying about censorship (Libs of TikTok is on there), but the platform feels personal in a way that social media hasn't been in a while. Like a cozy group of folks meeting for a coffee klatsch. Plus, blessedly, Josh Hawley isn't on there, which probably is reason enough to join.

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