The Masked Singer is better in a post-Twitter era

Sometimes, I miss Twitter. Before the loathsome Elon Musk bought the platform, it gave me some of my favourite moments in the history of the internet. There’s nowhere else I could’ve had a night-long argument about capital punishment with a former X Factor winner. But that's a story for another time.

One time I absolutely do not miss Twitter is when I settle down on a Saturday night to watch the latest episode of The Masked Singer. For the uninitiated, The Masked Singer is a show in which celebrities wear elaborate mascot costumes in order to hide their identity while they perform. The in-studio judging panel gets a video package full of clues each week to help nudge them towards the person behind the mask.

These clues are immensely cryptic and, often, almost entirely impenetrable. They require an enormous amount of knowledge on the part of the viewer. For example, an early episode of this new series revealed Kate Garraway as the person behind the “Spag Bol” costume. One prominent clue featured a row of tennis balls with “06:00” written on them – a nod to her 6am broadcast slot for GMTV alongside former tennis player Andrew Castle. That’s a lot of dots for any viewer to join.

But all of this is part of the fun. It would be a much less entertaining show if we could all guess every famous face in the first week. And that’s why I don’t miss Twitter.

The joy of a show like The Masked Singer is in the guessing. But there’s as much joy in getting an answer completely wrong and being surprised by the reveal as there is in being able to point at the screen and yell “I knew it” when the famous person’s sweaty visage is unveiled from beneath all of the fake fur.

Twitter removes this joy because, by the end of the first few episodes, every answer is out there. That’s not because of any behind-the-scenes leaks – the show is an absolute marvel in that respect – but because of the principle that two heads are better than one. Twitter provides literally thousands of heads, creating a battalion of armchair detectives all armed with Google and the determination of a grizzled cop trying to solve his final case.

There’s absolutely no way that the minds at Bandicoot TV are clever enough to out-smart thousands of people at once – not without making the clues quite literally unsolvable. As a result of this, it has been almost impossible in previous years to interact with the show’s hashtags without knowing with almost total certainty who each character is. 

During the 2023 series, I threw out a theory about the identity of Phoenix, only to be told within minutes – and with absolute certainty – that it was actually Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs behind the mask. The hivemind had spoken and, within seconds, any interest I had in that character disappeared. It’s not just that they’d got the right answer – anyone has the potential to guess after all – but this name had become so entrenched by then that the actual reveal became an irrelevance.

But now, the social media landscape is a little different. BlueSky isn’t a Masked Singer hotbed, Instagram lacks the immediacy of text-based platforms, and Facebook is too full of AI slop and racism to ever consider chatting about who’s jigging about on telly dressed as an enormous set of teeth.

Many of us have now become accustomed to this sort of TV as a dual-screen experience, where the social media chat is as much fun as the show itself. But that has never suited The Masked Singer, which is best as something to discuss with family and friends in your living room or at the office watercooler. Its joy comes from working out a single clue or noticing a particular vocal intonation that could be a giveaway, not from social media sleuths meticulously researching every hint and spinning through a Rolodex of stars. 

This year, I’ve been able to experience moments as joyous as my friend recognising the voice of Kingfisher last weekend and blowing the whole thing wide open. Presumably, over on Musk’s online hellhole, they stopped yelling at each other about cryptocurrency for long enough to lock that name in weeks ago.

Along with The Traitors, The Masked Singer is one of the best TV formats devised in the last few years. But while The Traitors thrives on the onslaught of memes and discussion points that emerge after the credits roll on each episode, The Masked Singer is better experienced as part of a small group. You probably don’t know enough about the lead singer of T’Pau to work her out, but you watched enough telly in the 2000s to know exactly who’s behind the Kingfisher mask.