X Politically Irrelevant? Vergecast Says It's All About AI Now

With less than 20 days until the U.S. midterm elections, The Verge's podcast Vergecast has made a sharp judgment: X (formerly Twitter) is politically irrelevant in this election cycle. This isn't to say no one on the platform is talking about politics — it's that the platform no longer has the ability to shape the electoral agenda.

The "Flameout" of Political Issues

Vergecast's host gave a concrete example: the right-wing camp once cooked up an entire conspiracy theory about James Tallarico being locked up in an Ohio psychiatric hospital. In past election cycles, narratives like this on X would spread like wildfire, eventually becoming a "topic assignment" for newsrooms across the media landscape — everyone would be forced to follow up with coverage.

But this time, it "just flamed out." No mainstream media followed up, no candidates were forced to respond. Vergecast used the phrase "in another world" to describe that hypothetical scenario: in a parallel world, X could have forcibly pushed this conspiracy theory into a public issue.

This contrast points directly to a structural change: X has been downgraded from an "issue engine" to an ordinary information feed.

Agenda-setting theory is the key background for understanding this phenomenon. The theory was proposed by McCombs and Shaw in 1972, with the core idea being: while media cannot determine what people "think," they can significantly influence what people "think about" — by pushing certain issues into the public eye through frequency and prominence of coverage. Traditionally, platforms like X played exactly the role of "issue engine": a conspiracy theory repeatedly shared and amplified on the timeline would create "topic pressure" that media had to follow up on, thereby entering the mainstream agenda. What Vergecast describes as "flaming out" is essentially this agenda-setting chain breaking on X — the narrative failed to gain enough传播 momentum, and therefore couldn't trigger the media's follow-up mechanism.

Candidates No Longer Compete on X

A more noteworthy judgment comes from observations of election behavior. Vergecast points out that in this cycle, candidates are almost nowhere to be seen debating each other on X, publishing policy positions, or reacting to trending topics on X.

Traditionally, the political value of social platforms manifests at three levels: candidates actively speaking out, media passively following topics, and voters participating in discussion. When the first link breaks, the latter two naturally shrink. X's political relevance wasn't weakened by external regulation — it was bypassed by political participants themselves "voting with their feet."

"Voting with one's feet" originally referred to consumers expressing dissatisfaction by leaving a market, later extended to mean individuals or organizations conveying preferences through migration behavior rather than public statements. In the context of platform political communication, candidates and campaign teams no longer treating X as their main battlefield is a classic case of voting with one's feet: they haven't publicly announced "abandoning X," but they've shifted their communication resources to other channels. This behavior is more damaging than regulatory bans because it directly removes the supply side that platform political influence depends on — without candidates actively setting agendas, the platform loses the material for political competition, and media follow-up and voter discussion shrink accordingly.

X Chooses to Win on AI Topics

Vergecast offers a fairly explanatory framework: X hasn't lost influence in all domains — it has actively chosen to win on a single track: AI conversation.

The host's description comes with a touch of irony: if you're a VC wanting to show your peers how smart you are, here's a ready-made platform; if you're excited about the future of AI and software development, this works for you too. In other words, X's user structure and topic ecosystem have become highly skewed toward the tech and venture capital circles.

This also explains a widespread confusion and anger: the outside world still measures X against the old expectations of a "public square," while the platform itself has already bet its focus on AI and VC circle discussions. When expectations are mismatched, evaluations naturally split.

"Public square" is the most frequently cited metaphor around X, originating from its early self-positioning as a "town square"-style free discussion space. This metaphor presupposes the broadness of the platform's user structure: only when ordinary people from all classes and positions are present does the square have the ability to aggregate public issues. When the platform's core users shift to tech and venture capital circles, the square's "demographic structure" changes — it becomes more like an industry conference than a city square. The outside world still evaluates X with the old expectations of a public square, while the platform's actual ecosystem has tilted toward professional circles. This mismatch between expectations and reality is exactly the source of the "confusion and anger" Vergecast describes.

The Cost of Platform Repositioning

The value of this observation isn't in disparaging a particular platform, but in revealing the migration patterns of social platforms' political influence. When a platform's core users shift from the general public to specific professional circles, its ability to set public agendas declines accordingly — even if daily active user numbers still look impressive.

For media professionals, this means X's trending list can no longer serve as a barometer for topic selection; for political communication teams, budgets and energy need to be reallocated; for readers following the AI industry, X remains an information hub that cannot be ignored. The same platform now carries severely differentiated weight across different topics.

Vergecast's conclusion is blunt enough: apart from AI and the venture capital circle, X has become irrelevant in almost all other contexts. Whether this judgment is too absolute is still open to debate, but it at least provides a testable observation angle — in the next election cycle, see whether conspiracy theories can still catch fire on X.

One-line Summary

Vergecast believes X is politically irrelevant in this midterm election cycle and has shifted focus to AI and venture capital circles.

Paragraph Summary

The Verge podcast Vergecast argues ahead of the midterms that X is politically irrelevant in this election cycle. Using the "flameout" of a right-wing conspiracy theory as an example, the article explains that X has been downgraded from an "issue engine" to an ordinary information feed and can no longer drive mainstream media follow-up. Candidates no longer debate policy or respond to hot topics on X, and the platform's political participation chain has broken from the supply side. Vergecast believes X has actively chosen to win in AI conversations and venture capital circles, with users and topic ecosystems highly skewed, leading to a split in evaluations when the outside world measures the platform against old "public square" expectations. The article ultimately points out that as the platform's core users shift to professional circles, its ability to set public agendas will decline accordingly, and media, political communication teams, and AI readers need to reassess X's weight across different topics.