John Oliver hasn’t posted on X, still popularly referred to as Twitter, in more than a year — but on Monday morning, he returned. Of course, he only returned so he could post his newest show segment, which is specifically one big takedown of Twitter.
The HBO host devoted his main story on this week’s episode of “Last Week Tonight” to checking in on the social platform and discussing what it’s become since Elon Musk took over. As always, Oliver didn’t mince words about it, calling the platform “worse than useless” when it comes to getting news, and never once called it by the updated name Musk gave it when he took over.
“The point here is Twitter has become a sewer of misinformation, with the power to bring about troubling real world impacts,” he said. “To be clear, this is now a problem that goes far beyond this administration or this country.”
Throughout the segment, Oliver illustrated exactly how dependent the Trump administration has become on Twitter, how misinformation spreads on the platform — often stemming from accounts that are indeed based in other countries, and more. When all was said and done though, Oliver didn’t really have any solutions to offer, as he normally does.
“The fact is, a massive media platform has been shaped in the image of its poisonous owner, and it doesn’t seem like Elon’s going to see the error of his ways anytime soon, seeing his brain seems to be thoroughly cooked by the garbage it consumes on his own sites,” he said.
So, Oliver’s advice was simple: just don’t use the social media platform.
“I haven’t done that in over a year, although I will be going back there tomorrow to post a link to this piece before going silent again and prioritizing my OnlyFans,” he joked.
And indeed, come Monday morning, Oliver’s account had one new post, with a short caption of: “Hello again! Here’s our piece from Sunday about Twitter. Bye!”
The late night host conceded that people might have their own reasons for continuing to use the site, but also argued that most of what is accomplished there could be accomplished in other ways.
“If you want to stay in touch with friends or contacts, maybe try and connect with them somewhere else,” he encouraged. “If you spend most of your time sending your significant other memes and funny posts, there are other sites where you can find those, but also maybe put your phone down and take your wife out to dinner. It’s been a long time since you went out without the kids.”
“And if you just want to watch arguments, may I recommend the ‘Real Housewives’ franchises for Shakespeare of the modern age?”
You can watch John Oliver’s full story on Twitter in the video above.
