I’ve been trying to quit Twitter for at least six months now, ever since E[fart noise]k first made his intentions to purchase the site public. I think, after a lot of hemming and hawing and things breaking and people fleeing – and other, more horrible people returning – that I’ve finally reached my tipping point. While I’d like to claim the moral high ground, the truth is that, as of this morning, every third tweet is now some absolutely garbage promoted tweet and Twitter’s become more trouble than it’s worth.
So, once again, the exodus is here – but this time I’m pretty sure it’s actually going to stick.
What’s that old rule? You’re allowed to be sad for a month for every year of your relationship, but, after that, you’ve got to move on. Otherwise you’re just wallowing, flopping around like a pig in overly-sentimental shit. I think that’s what’s been so weird about this, why it’s been so hard to leave. I keep telling myself Twitter’s just an app, a website, a tool, but Twitter’s actually been a lot more than that. I’ve been there for over a decade. Like it or not, I really have been in a relationship, as tempestuous and occasionally one-sided as it might have been.
Twitter certainly isn’t the first website to vanish into the ether during my tenure as an internet citizen – MySpace and Xanga both bought the farm while I still had accounts. And walking away from Facebook and Instagram for moral reasons was actually pretty easy. But I was never as invested in any of them as I was Twitter. Well, maybe Xanga, but I left at what felt like the right time for me. It wasn’t taken from me and sold to a racist, space-obsessed shitlord.
As a result, though, I never had to examine what those sites meant to me. How they affected my very real life.
As someone who still remembers when being offline was the only way to be, it’s weird to realize that social media (and the internet more generally) has become an integral part of my existence. Of everyone’s existence, really. As someone who never quite let go of the ’90s Gen-X mentality – my closet full of flannel can confirm this – being intrinsically and existentially tangled with a corporation is, like, the worst-case scenario. But it happened, slowly and subtly and surely, and now here I am, sad and personally affronted that a couple of greedy billionaires acted like greedy billionaires.
Twitter was where I got my news. Where I found work. Where I sold books and talked with readers and talked with other authors and bought other books. It was where I kept in touch with friends and where I made new ones. Where I occasionally hobnobbed with celebrities or got dragged by strangers. (The latter isn’t particularly recommended, mind you, but finding out you’ve got twenty “centrist” assholes frothing and an entire Reddit devoted to how you, personally, ruined Cracked does make you feel important, if nothing else.)
All of that is gone now. People have been bailing left and right, and whatever’s going on with the algorithm and advertising has made Twitter functionally useless.
In many ways, my social media sphere right now feels like the summer after graduating from high school, with everyone you cared about slowly scattering to the four winds. Everything you knew falling away, never to return. Only this time I don’t have the hope that I’ll figure things out and meet new people once I get to college. (Probably because I didn’t really figure things out until well after my five-year, three-school pursuit of an undergraduate degree, and also because, quite frankly, meeting new people in my forties feels like too much effort.)
So, where do we go from here? Well, we feel sad and we move on. And, maybe, to further the college metaphor, we invest in a messenger bag and some new Gazelles and start growing our hair long.
Personally – and despite the lack of browser functionality and the app barely working on Android – I think I’ve settled on Hive Social as my new digital home. It is, so far, like a very writer-centric Twitter without any of the downsides of Twitter. (If you’re there, my handle is @NotAViking, or just search my name. I’m the only me in the entire world.)
A quick aside while we’re on the subject: I tried Mastodon and kind of hated it? I get the point, and I definitely see the appeal for anarchists and the like, but for someone trying to sell books, it’s not so good. Plus the UI is like the digital equivalent of Brutalist architecture. I feel like I’m intruding in the cobbled-together concrete hut of some dude living in the woods. I also briefly dabbled in Discord but I genuinely don’t get it. Like, I can’t follow threads and don’t know who’s replying to who, how anyone’s having a conversation. Same with Tumblr. It’s chaos. There’s a reason I never did message boards.
And, as an aside to the aside, while I enjoyed Instagram for a while, it’s become a lost cause, a recommendation engine that only recommends steaming piles of stuff that’s exactly the opposite of what you’re interested in. Nevermind that anything that relies heavily on video is too rich for my blood. See also: TikTok and YouTube. If I want to watch TV, I’ll watch TV.
I’ll also admit to – in my jonesing for likes and digital validation and personal interaction – dipping my toe back into Facebook. A genuinely surprising amount of my IRL acquaintances have remained active there through the decades. Which is to say I might stick around again? Maybe? I still don’t like it, but somehow Z[diarrhea sounds]g isn’t the worst Nazi-fellating billionaire out there. We’ll see how long my ethics can hold out.
I’m also starting a Substack, which will basically just be this blog, except on a platform where people might actually see it. (And, in fact, this will be the first post!) Of course, if you’re only interested in book updates, there’s my mailing list, too. And, uh, I play Fortnite a lot if that’s a thing you might also be into, I guess.
Could all of this change it a week? Sure. Will more billionaires ruin more things? Absolutely. But, regardless, whatever happens and wherever I end up, I promise at least 200% more dog photos by volume. Hey, look, here’s one now!
