so long, twitter

thank for all the fun, but the time has come

I guess you could say I was a twitter power user. 17 years, 350k+ tweets, 650k followers, and tons of engagement. Yesterday I left that all behind. It was a good time, until it wasn’t.

I have an obsession problem. I hook onto a new hobby or a new band in much the same way; I obsess, I hyperfocus, it becomes like an addiction. And that’s what twitter was for me. An addiction.

It was enjoyable for a long time. I made a ton of very good friends. I got several writing jobs through twitter. I made connections that have become very important to me. I tweeted about what I was having lunch as much as I tweeted about world issues. It was a good place that served me well during my divorce and other assorted life calamities that presented themselves while I was a twitter user. People rallied around me when I was sad, when I was broke, when I needed advice. It was a haven, a neighborhood bar, a party, a soapbox.

Seventeen years. That’s longer than any relationship I ever had by three years. It’s the longest I held on to a singular obsession. Fellow users watched my kid grow from teens to adults. They watched me navigate heartbreak and retirement and shared in hundreds of good times with me. I posted at least 40 pictures of French onion soup, hundreds of pictures of my dogs and cats, thousands of songs and videos. I made friend with many musicians whose music I listen to on a daily basis. I got 183 people to write something for my new website. I became more radicalized than I already was.

At some point - let’s say 2016, no reason -twitter started to become toxic and angry and depressing. I stayed with it because I needed to be with friends, because I needed somewhere to put my rants and shout my frustration out and rail against the man and the world. I stayed because my friends stayed, because we knew we needed each other for light in a world that was becoming increasingly dark. We comforted each other through Covid, kept each other company during lockdown, mourned friends and family. together. Underneath it all, there was so much to be alarmed about. The influx of literal Nazis, the Trumpers, the anti-trans, homophobic, misogynistic, violence seeking fascists, the President himself being a shitposter, it was a lot to take in.

I curated my feed so I was following only people whose voices I wanted to hear, but things get retweeted and quote tweeted so you see all the vitriol, all the stupidity, all the horrors of war. And it wasn’t just all that which forced me to look at how I was spending my time, but it was about whose website I was doing this all on.

We all know Elon Musk is a right wing nutjob whose views border on nazism. I didn’t pay anything to him to use his website, at least not financially. I paid with my mental health. I paid with heartache. I paid with anger sitting in my soul. When he became an official part of the Trump 2.0 team this week something snapped in me. After years of trying to get myself off of twitter and failing, I suddenly and strongly wanted nothing to do with it. It was like someone came in with a surgical knife and separated me from the thing that was making me sick.

I made a quick three tweet thread about getting out and that was it. I moved the app off my home screen. I closed the tab on my laptop that was forever open. I turned off notifications. I locked my account. I was free. After 17 years of spending most of my days typing into a text box that did nothing but extract poison from me and put it out into the world, I was free. Free from constantly checking my notifications tab, free from going through replies, free from nazis, free from Musk himself. Would there be things about it I will miss? Absolutely. I’ll deal with it.

No, I haven’t left social media all together. I have moved to Bluesky, where things are pleasant and people are posting about what they had for lunch and arguing about semantics (what to call posts is a hot button issue). The pace is slower; on twitter everything felt urgent and immediate, on bluesky there’s just a meandering sort of timeline that feels lighter, more pleasant. I don’t feel the need to post all the time. For now, it feels very casual as opposed to twitter’s sense of self importance. Most of my friends from twitter have made the switch (in fact, the bluesky app is number one in the app store right now) so I don’t feel like I’m missing anything except the bad stuff.

I could leave social media outright, but why would I? These sites have admittedly brought me joy. They brought me friendship. They brought me comfort and peace and love. Importantly, they give me a place to say what’s on my mind instead of forcing my heart and my gut to hold it all and feel bad about it. For now, bluesky is a pleasant place. If it turns like twitter did, I will leave that, too.

Going from a power user to zero tweets for 24 hours now is a mind fuck. My muscle memory wants me to find the twitter tab first thing in the morning. I want to know what’s going on there, but I won’t look lest I get dragged back in. The only time I will go back on twitter now is to promote my website and check my group DMs, where some of the holdouts still live for me.

I’m happy with the choice I made. I already feel lighter, more clear headed. I’m not looking at everything that happens as possible tweet fodder. I will miss it. Oh, how I will miss it. I know there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, but I can do things to mitigate that. I feel like I’m taking a stance, that this isn’t just about making my brain work better, but about not giving Musk my words, my time, my life.

The next four years are going to be hell, and a lot of it will be broadcast on Elon Musk’s website, along with the chorus of people championing a fascist regime. I feel broken. Perhaps breaking from twitter will help me.

To all my twitter friends, thank you for a lovely seventeen years. Thank you for befriending me, for being there for me, for being wonderful. Hope to see you where the skies are bluer.