Leaving Twitter
It is not as easy as it looks
The year was 2009. Smartphones were relatively nonexistent, at least for those in the mainstream. Most cell phones then were flip phones or those infamous Nokia phones that never broke. I thought I was hot shit when I got a new phone at this time that had a full QWERTY keyboard under the screen. But the phone was not powerful enough to run the web browser efficiently. It was slow and clunky.
App-based services were also clunky and often linked you directly to a website anyway.
But during the day, while I worked my 10-hour-a-day, 40-hour-a-week grocery stocking job, I would sometimes have thoughts or jokes that I wanted to share with a broader audience than just the three or four of us who happened to be in the backrooms at the time. I had a Facebook, but it was hard to post there due to having to load the website and navigate the screen with the arrow keys to find the appropriate link.
Then I learned of Twitter.
At the time, it had only been around for a couple of years, though it was taking off. So, after work one day, I got on the computer at home and went to Twitter.com and set up an account. But I did not do anything with it because I did not understand it all. It was the first time in years that I had joined a new social media platform. And it all seemed so different from what I was used to. Unlike when I set up my Facebook, I did not just see a blank page waiting for me to fill it by making friends. Instead, I saw a perpetually updating stream of content from news agencies to musicians.
As I navigated the website to learn how to use it, I saw that I could post a Tweet to my account by sending a text to a five-digit phone number and it would go live immediately. I did what I needed to do to make that happen, but before I could play with it, something was wrong with my wife and I needed to check on her.
This led to the stressful and scary situation in which my daughter was born. We went to the ER where we were whisked to a room and within minutes her OBGYN and the nurses were wheeling her bed to an operating room, leaving me and her mom to pray and ask God and each other, “What is happening?” I texted and called friends and relatives to ask for prayer and tell them that I would update them as soon as I knew what was going on.
A few minutes later, the doctor came back and told us about the emergency c-section and that mom and baby were both fine as could be expected, though baby was premature by a few weeks and would be in the NICU for a couple of days and my ex-wife would need a couple of days in the hospital as well for observation.
I signed the paperwork and named her and then, when things had sort of settled down, I sent my first Tweet.
A simple statement that I was now a dad and would not be leaving the hospital until everyone was ready to go home.
14 years have passed since I set up my Twitter, and last week I completely deactivated it. This was not an easy decision. 14 years is a long time. I had connected with some of my favorite bands and musicians. Interacted with theologians and authors. As I navigated my way through life’s struggles and some of my highest and lowest points, Twitter had been an escape. It was fun. I was not on there all time. I went through spurts where I would avoid it or I would get a new phone and get distracted by the new things that I would neglect to get back on there right away.
And when I began my shift to a more liberal-minded Christianity, I spent ample time over the course of nearly two years manipulating my feed to reflect social justice-focused content. This did lead to my feed being rather left-leaning, and I cannot underestimate the influence that may have had on the direction of my spiritual journey.
Over time, though, the users of Twitter were becoming more and more negative and aggressive. I began to have to be more proactive about blocking and unfollowing to keep my feed focused where I wanted it. But this was not a problem. It became like a sort of game to me.
And when my blog began to grow and people began to actually notice what I was saying, Twitter became a great source for driving traffic there. I never had anything go viral, but I could post a link along with some relevant hashtags, and within minutes I would have 10 or more retweets and actual clicks through to the story.
That all went away when Elon Musk purchased the platform in 2022.
At first, there was the shakeup that tends to follow acquisitions of this sort. Some people left the site and people became a little less active while waiting to see what would happen next. Then he began firing people and screwing around with Twitter Blue. And content moderation began to feel nonexistent.
Racist and bigoted views went from just floating around specific corners of the app and now were showing up in the mainstream and being amplified by Elon himself.
I posted a few more links to my blog around this time, and noticed that my traffic was beginning to dwindle. I started a now shut-down Tumblr to share my blog with a new audience. I still felt I could utilize the platform in some way, though.
Then everything changed.
Twitter became a wasteland.
In more ways than one.
As the racists and bigots began to have their voices amplified, much of my left-leaning and social justice-minded accounts shut down and left. My feed slowed down to being a handful of people who continued to try to share their views and content but it was not gaining traction as it once did. As people left and started accounts elsewhere, the gaps began to be filled with random popular content, much of which was right-leaning. It was annoying, but I was determined to stick it out.
I posted a blog link around this time, and it went nowhere. This was right after Elon announced that those who were not paying for the blue checkmark would not see their content recommended. So I started an account at Mastodon and began to use the Fediverse instead of Twitter.
Though I did maintain my Twitter presence for a time in order not to lose the handle that I had used for 14 years.
Until now.
I signed on a couple of weeks ago, and I had 4 notifications. Those usually amount to some random spam bot account or a Tweet from someone I am not interested in following and I can usually ignore them. This time, they were recommending me 4 different Qanon Tweets. And when I looked at my feed, for every social-justice tweet, there were multiple pro-January 6, anti-BLM, pro-book-banning ones. That was the last straw.
I spent years cultivating a Twitter experience free of much of the argument and controversy that most people see when they get on Twitter. It was a deliberate and hard-to-accomplish task and all of my work was undone because these guys had blue checkmarks and were taking advantage of that to spread ignorance and hate and have it amplified to everyone.
I refuse to be a part of that.
I shut my account down completely. And I am finding myself spending more time on Mastodon than nearly anywhere else. I cannot say it is “better” or that it does not have its share of controversy. But the instance I am a part of has moderators that work hard to keep out the hatred and bigotry that Elon Musk and his ilk revel in.
Maybe they do it for the likes or the clout. It keeps them in the spotlight and brings in that coveted ad revenue. But, like I tell my stepdaughter, It does not matter much what your intentions are. When your actions are harmful or wrong, you are in the wrong. When you know what the right thing to do is, and you do not do it, you are also in the wrong.