This isn’t about Twitter

I had some positive feedback this week on a nearly decade old post about social media and my desire to use it less.

Just about everyone has a relationship with social media these days. It’s an evergreen topic. You can always write about social media the way playwrights can always write plays about the theater.

For those who use social media daily – which seems to be most people – there is an undying curiousity to know “what it’s like” to pull the plug.

I did it for over four years. No Facebook, no Twitter, no blog.

What changed?

Not much, really.

As I summed it up in the post:

The truth is, when it comes to social media and whether you’re on it or not, nobody really cares. The thing people notice most about social media is their own presence in it – not the lack of someone else’s.

What I missed mostly was having this space – here on this site – to write and reflect. Social media, in all of its forms, but especially Twitter, is mostly a place to get the word out. Or at least, that’s how I prefer to use it these days.

I don’t like the performative nature of threads.

I don’t like the addictive quality of shortform video, designed to keep you hooked without imparting anything useful.

And I don’t like the general toxicity of the platform.

Attention is easy: Be outrageous. Be mean-spirited.

Burn bridges, name-names.

If you’re not careful, you can easily get caught up in it and start thinking that being there is the point. Chasing likes, follows, and retweets becomes a kind of score that no one really cares about.

For me, it’s not worth it. This isn’t about Twitter.

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