I quit Twitter 1 year ago this week and couldn’t be happier about my decision. The time distance has made me realize how banal the whole thing is. I used to think I was staying in the loop of what society is thinking about. In retrospect, it was really just the loudest 1% and didn’t represent what anyone I know in real life was talking about.
I quit Twitter around 2014/5. I couldn’t figure out why people were posting about inane topics (what I ate for breakfast etc.) and not talking about subjects that matter (politics, corruption etc.). In particular why weren’t celebrities with huge followings not talking about important issues.<p>Well, how wrong was I. I’d love to go back to that time.
I guess the author was kept around by the need to comment and interact. Seems like an aspect that I don't hear about to much. Usually people seem to talk about scrolling, consuming and time wasting on these sites. I can kind of relate to this behavior.(even here I'm commenting, sharing my pointless thoughts lol)<p>I guess she just has a need and strong desire to share thoughts and write them down. Considering she seems to be enough of an author to be published writing is something she likes to do. Twitter would be another outlet for that. Is that so bad, as long as its not interfering with the rest of her life. Seems like she still is writing long articles regularly.<p>I feel like i got wrapped up in the need to comment too. I did do some similar experiments on my self. The trigger for this was political stuff. A little more drastically i went and deleted my twitter account, to my surprise the account is actually fully gone after 30 days. I never felt like putting the effort to get an account back so that habit is pretty much gone. Facebook doesn't have much of a network for me anymore, feels like its dying so it doesn't get much use from me except for linking with instagram. Instagram i only use as a photo sharing place and to see artwork, not really a commenter there. Disconnecting from reddit was interesting, i found my self still wanting to comment, and make throwaway jokes. Nothing thoughtful, dumb shit i thought would be funny. Sometimes I would see a small comment suggesting something wrong and wanted to them know. It feels like weird behavior.<p>Overall i guess i wonder why we make comments, like what drives this behavior. Then why most other people don't participate. I think only 1% or something of an online community actually contribute. These comments seem to be somewhere between actually sharing thoughts and socializing but not quite either.
They hide the tweet counts for a reason.<p>It's hard to respect the "Verified" users if you knew they all have tweet counts that when divided by hours since they joined the platform it comes out at over 1 tweet an hour every hour for 9+ years.<p>You can check this yourself using the wayback machine to see all their counts from before it was hidden. Pretty much every popular personality on Twitter is hopelessly addicted to it and you realize how little value their views have when they must be staring at it for hours and hours a day.
I find twitter really good for staying abreast of local emergencies. Fire in the area, road closed etc. All the EMS are on it and post near real time updates when stuff is going on.
Twitter is about the worst platform I've seen. It's worse than all the "chan" websites and I don't know how they are allowed to continue.<p>The only major difference I can see between the two are the political and ideological opposites. On the chans it's A-OK to post about wiping out some "inferior race", while on Twitter wiping out or mistreating men is accepted. All kinds of kink porn is easily found on Twitter (which was a big surprise), people confess to crimes, harass each other, dox and send death threats to "the other side", spread fake news, falsely accuse each other with real world consequences, and so much more. Yet somehow, Twitter is a standard app on devices, newspapers, governments, underage kids and grandpas use it.<p>Is it just money?
A bit from Bo Burnham's new special "Inside" has really resonated with me. He essentially says that people are increasingly treating real life as some sort of coal mine - a place where they go to extract something (an experience, an opinion, whatever) and then bring it back to the surface to share and use in the digital world.
I never found the appeal. If something important is posted, it'll be picked up by everyone, otherwise it's 99% likely noise, and not even the interesting kind.
I've gone in a cycle through different Social Media sites, after a year or so I manage to get the strength to leave but usually end up on a different site.<p>One thing is I always delete my account after 3-6 months and create a new one, following different people/groups etc.
The only utility I ever got from Twitter was negotiating favorable rates for Xfinity via the Comcast Twitter handle. Otherwise it feels like a complete waste of time.
I guess as long as you're not addicted(?), Twitter is a great research tool for specific kinds of things. For example open source intelligence topics.<p>Or general learning about a given topic. Tons of writers and journalists use Twitter, so if you're interested in higher-quality takes on a given topic, or just updates on e.g. author interviews and upcoming events, it can be a really good resource.<p>I tested Twitter while doing some research on astrology and found that some of the most on-target astrology advice I could find was found in the Twitter Topic for my ascendant sign (different from the typical sun sign used in astrology). It was far better than some of the paid services I tested. Very subjective-anecdotal (I ended up making my own lists based on what was interesting/useful to me) but I think it shows that it helps to consciously examine what Twitter is good at.<p>Lists can be really good too. Like this one for Open Source CAD: <a href="https://twitter.com/i/lists/963793700190146560" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/i/lists/963793700190146560</a>
I was hoping the article would end with the author deleting her twitter account altogether but it seems she recently “straw-tweeted” a link to this article: <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/CaitlinPacific/status/1412091950618976258" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.twitter.com/CaitlinPacific/status/14120919506...</a>
<i>It was time for Twitter rehab.<p>It was to be a battle of wills between one aging, chemo-addled brain and</i><p>So the real story is she had chemo therapy at some point, presumably for cancer, and was still impaired and during presumably her recovery, Twitter became too big a thing in her life. Either out of prosaic misattribution or intentionally creating drama for the sake of writing a story, she frames it as <i>an addiction</i> she needed to beat.<p>This really had nothing to do with Twitter. If Twitter hadn't existed, there would be some other thing she got stuck on during recovery.<p>Twitter was the right amount of mental engagement for her during recovery when harder things were beyond her reach. When she was more recovered, she recognized it was time to move on and do other things. And she did so.<p>The end.
I quit Twitter on March 20th and it was the best thing I’ve done in a long, long time.<p>The funny thing was that it starts sending you random notifications from people you don’t even follow or have the bell on for as a dark pattern to get you to come back.<p>What I realized is — like how I quit reading the news many years ago — everything on Twitter is pointless and ephemeral.<p>From one outrage cycle to the next, never relenting. Everyone always mad about some meaningless minutiae. If it was actually important it would surface by some other means so I never missed anything.<p>Then I’d go outside and everyone’s living their lives like Twitter doesn’t exist.<p>It’s easier to do than you think. Lock your account, turn off notifications for the whole app, and do literally anything else.
I have not get started with Twitter on my very first it use because I have subscribed to roughly hundred accounts a day, maybe more. They were mostly relable to my business. My account has became shadowbanned and my posts (all 10 with unique photos) has marked as suspicious but only for others. Maybe it is because I have written something about ncov-19. Also I hoped I can tweet from SMS without need to have access to web - but I could not setup this option, maybe I do not know something. I decided to do nothing but if SMS option is possible in some way I will try to unlock my account to start use it for promoting my business.
For tech it’s very important for staying up to date. There is a lot of content there that is not elsewhere.<p>The best strategy is to block keywords to avoid all the social justice and politics. I just wished they allowed blocking more than 200 words.
Out of couriosity, with all the attempts to create a "healthy" social network, has anyone attempted to build one that has a defined downtime for the <i>entire</i> network? (I'm thinking at least a consecutive week each month, possibly more)<p>After all, a large part of "withdrawal" seems to be FOMO, i.e. the feeling that <i>everyone else</i> is having the time of their life while you are missing out. However, if you can be sure nothing is happening because the network is shut down, FOMO might be greatly reduced.
Oh ... Twitter! How about those who never joined the Twitter? Should I join the Twitter? Serious question. Why to join it in the first place? What are the reasons to join it?
Besides my personal account which I rarely use, I collaborate on another account that is mostly write-only, to be honest.<p>Social media is good if you want to spread a message and reach other interested people. It is also good to find interesting stuff as a distraction.<p>Social networks <i>used</i> to be good to represent yourself, to keep contact with friends, and to meet new real people around you. It's really sad nothing like that exists anymore.
I hate twitter and I'm also addicted to it.<p>The reason I'm on it is because a lot of the best info on Covid this year breaks on Twitter weeks or even months before it's common knowledge.
I get annoyed every time people post twitter links here and wish they'd stop. Since twits requires javascript (to infect/track everyone) now, I just will not. It's like the old paywall site argument, will you sell your soul?