Twitter Quitter

January 6, 2018

I’ve decided to close my Twitter account. William Van Hecke makes a convincing case for its diminishing utility, and it’s clear that Jack is more concerned with eyeballs than standards.

I stopped regularly reading my timeline months ago. The few times I have dipped in, I’ve ended up angry or depressed. Despite occasional bright spots, there is always someone sharing the angst of the day. I read the news. I don’t need Twitter to make me more anxious. As such, I’ve only been using Twitter for cross posting from my micro.blog account and responding to mentions. Slack meets my social chat needs without the screaming-into-the-void that Twitter has become.

After some reflection, I’ve concluded that even posting to Twitter is just providing content to a platform for hate and anger. I can’t fix that problem, but I can stop contributing to the platform. And so I will.

I’m taking my Twitter account private. I’ll stop reading and (after this) posting to it. If you want to get in touch, please email, iMessage, or drop a mention @curt on micro.blog. I’d also be happy for an invite to your Slack group or a friend request on Facebook. (While Facebook is also an addiction-exploiting attention hole, it provides much more control to users. The positives there outweigh the negatives.)

Be well. Find the good in the world. Peace.

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