Getting off of Twitter (for real this time)
I have like 5 or 6 half written blog posts about various topics hanging out in my Google drive but of course I want to write about being on the internet again. For obvious reasons I am finally getting my stupid ass off of Twitter for good. And honestly… I don’t know if I’ll miss it.
I was a twitter freak for many years. 15 to be exact, which seems insane. I made an account on there back in high school (2009) and I used that same account up until this month. Back then it was way smaller, and I remember people being like “ew Twitter? Isn’t that just Facebook for stalkers?” since it was the website you’d post what you ate for lunch on. I even remember there was a facebook group called “Twitter at [my high school]” where people would share their handles with each other. There were I think at most 10 people in it, myself included.
My favorite tweet of all time
I used to post on Twitter under my full legal name and a photo of myself as the profile picture which in retrospect seems crazy. Many of my followers are still people I went to high school and college with. If you’re one of those people and are reading this now, sorry for flooding your timeline with drawings of skeletons and characters from Street Fighter. Although I think at this point, most of those people have long moved on to Instagram.
Twitter was good for a while because it was a place on the internet with cool people around the time when my parents and extended family were signing up for Facebook and adding me to their friends lists. There were comedians, artists, general weirdos whose posts you enjoyed reading. World news and hyper local updates. Dozens of feeds to follow for all your weird niche hobbies. Gay porn. It was great! When I was in college I used to follow like 750 accounts so I would always have something to read during class if I got bored. It probably fried my brain, let’s be real. But it was fun!
One time someone printed out a tweet of mine to display irl...
Twitter got worse the more and more people signed up for it. It got exponentially worse in 2016 when tons of right wing grifters and all their followers latched onto it. It got even more worse two years later when Tumblr very famously banned porn and all their users decided to jump ship. Those two events I think became a turning point in the culture of Twitter where it became less about sharing fun updates with your friends to more of a decentralized PvP zone about quote retweeting people to tell them to kill themselves.
My own unique hell of Twitter was the Final Fantasy XIV community. I got really into posting pictures of my character using the in game screenshot feature. I got a decent size following from it, got to see tons of great art, cosplay, screenshots, writing, and even made some friends along the way. I was also exposed to some of the most insane discourse I have ever seen about stuff that literally does not matter in the real world whatsoever. Slapfights about mods, a billboard, people wanting to e-fuck other people’s characters… I could write a whole academic paper about my experiences. Maybe I will someday.
Anyway, Twitter started really going down the drain when Elon Musk bought it and it became a bot hellscape filled with engagement bait. People I know are slowly jumping ship to Bluesky. I kind of hated Bluesky at first because the vibes were very much “the most annoying people you know huffing their own farts” but now that there’s way more people on it it’s much more bearable. And I’ve found a lot of great artists too!
Some last thoughts about moving to yet another social media platform:
- Having an account on something that isn’t like an email address for 15 years is really bizarre to think about. Especially because 15 years is half my life.
- There are a LOT of people I have lost contact with that I knew from tumblr or twitter. Either they deleted their accounts or they’re still up but hasn’t been used in a couple years. It makes me very sad.
- I have a lot of really cool mutual follows on twitter that I’m bummed about losing. Lots of artists whose work I really admire. FFXIV players from overseas. A couple bands I absolutely love! I think people will migrate to bluesky eventually but it’s slow. And honestly, I don’t blame people that don’t want to.
- I’m happier to be on a social media platform where I don’t have over 1,000 followers and 75% of what I see are from people I regularly talk to. Smaller online spaces are the future.
- I had a tweet about daft punk's breakup go mega viral. It was awful.
- I’m not signing up for any more social media after this one. Lol
I was probably addicted to Twitter to be honest and I genuinely hated it so much the last couple years that I put so many blocks and filters on it for it to be even worth it. At the same time I’ve been following some people for years and years and I’m inevitably going to be losing contact with folks which sucks. And it extra sucks that a loser billionaire can just buy and ruin a huge communication platform! But hey, my favorite bara artist followed me back on Bluesky so that has to be a good omen, right?