The weird sorrow of losing Twitter

On the evening of November 17, news reports swept across Twitter that the platform had lost so many employees it likely no longer had the people behind it to keep its most vital services running. To commemorate the occasion — not unlike violins on the Titanic — longtime internet culture reporters Katie Notopoulos and Ryan Broderick hosted a massive Twitter space to discuss the demise of the service.

At publish time, Twitter had yet to splutter to a stop, and it’s not a given that it will shut down. Still, the changes made by...