Twitter is truly a magical place in sense that it can wake up the worst monster inside even the nicest person. Example is my elder mother, the sweetest person you met, but trolls and clowns on Twitter that she constantly engage with turn her into someone I never knew I would experience. Its very sad.<p>Now personally I am the calmest person you witness, but it takes less than 5 minutes of twitter scrolling to get me engaged with some idiot being wrong. Sometimes its a conversation that I follow and that conversation triggers me and I need to join wasting time and being angry. But not anymore! Just few months ago, in response to someone calling me bold (actually random avatar, far from bold/ing), I called them fat - apparently something that is on Twitter ban list, and my account got switched into "read only" mode. I could refresh and read newest content, but not follow or reply/tweet. Obviously I immediately went into wanting to appeal that decision... but then I realized - "let me try to use Twitter like this." And oh boy let me tell you how wonderful my experience is! Sometimes I still get to read idiots and nasty people's comments... but my own awareness that I cannot simply join them and waste my time and get myself angry, that blessing is simply worth $99 that I would otherwise gladly pay Twitter each and every month to have this blessing of a "read only" Twitter account.<p>End of the story.
I have a public account and a private account. My public one is very civilized and I don't do name-calling. I just try to add to a conversation rather then detract from it. I don't 'vent' or resort to thinly veiled trolling.<p>My other account is a private locked down account where I don't follow anyone, instead I use lists. I don't want bots scraping someone's follower list and then randomly adding me due to some automated tool. I /never/ get follow requests as a result.<p>I also don't favorite tweets. Instead I bookmark them, so only I can see them. I don't want likes public. My private account is for lurking. You should try doing this for your 'read only' experience.
If you get frustrated reading some other twits articles get offline. It is easy. Log out. Otherwise who is really the fool?<p>Can they control your life?<p>Get one!