If Godzilla bought a book store would you trust him to run it himself or would you be a little perturbed that his penchant for occasionally emitting white hot embers, seemingly harmless to him, might in fact immolate not just the store but the entire city block that it sits upon?
Furthermore, what if his trusted cadre, there to help him move the books, display the shelves, market the store and help the occasional customer, had no idea if there were even any fire extinguishers in the building and who think nothing of filling the building up with smokers, who roam wildly along the aisles flicking ashes everywhere because it’s been so long since people smoked indoors that there aren’t even any ashtrays in the building?
Oh, and what if Godzilla fired half of the people who actually knew how to run this particular bookstore, including the people who did know if there was in fact a sprinkler system in the building or at least if any fire hydrants were nearby?
Oh, and there’s a good chance that he’ll invite Smaug the dragon over to visit regularly, even give him a nesting place.
I’m not saying that this is a 100% fireproof allegory but on the other hand it’s wise to keep eyes fixed on the front door, and failing that, the exits. And watching for smoke.
It was 15 memorable years on what many people semi-jokingly refer to as the Hellsite. I learned a lot there, encountered a lot of wonderful people and saw lots of not so good stuff there, too. I recently posted a multi-Tweet thread listing 15 things I’ve learned in 15 years as a Twitter user. I posted something similar here a few months ago (14 years/14 things I’ve learned).
But those days are over now. I finally left Twitter. In accordance with Pareto’s Law, my feelings are 80% grief, 20% relief. The 15 things that I Tweeted… feel largely irrelevant at this point.
Chirpier days
Sure, I’ve used Facebook, Instagram and a bunch of other sites but Twitter was a sweet spot for me. It was a place for short pithy bursts into the Internet, a place for me to indulge whimsy, to be irreverent but also - and there’s no simpler way to say this - it was a place to be a good human, interacting with people all around the world. And you could do extremely well with text alone.
I landed on Twitter in 2008, looking for a place to promote some of my online writing. I had been active on Digg.com for awhile and other of the other social bookmarking sites of the day. Twitter was quite confusing at first but somehow I managed to form a network of people, some of whom I still maintain contact with to this day. Over time I layered in people with different interests: science fiction and fantasy, running, even people from Atlantic Canada who experienced many of the similar inconveniences that I do on a daily basis.
It wasn’t always smooth sailing. Sometimes I lost interest in what people wanted to talk about on Twitter. Sometimes I would commit the occasional gaffe. Sometimes I had to focus on other things. Kind of like any other group, really.
2020 was a watershed year for me in reengaging with social media because, like every other rule-abiding citizen, I was stuck at home while we all tried to cope with the global onset of COVID-19. I tried to share good information, encourage people who seemed to be struggling, and otherwise tried to spread my offbeat sense of humor to good effect.
You’ve got to understand: I’m an introvert. For periods of time I can almost pass for an extrovert when I’m in a group, but often other people are like Kryptonite to me. Too much peopling drains my batteries. I’m not great at small talk (well, not for sustaining it for long periods of time). I’m not really into sports, reality TV or alcohol. I like geeky things. I don’t have a lot of time for people who need to be the center of attention. I’m also a fairly private person so I tend not to talk to much about my personal life to strangers.
But with Twitter… it always felt like a place where I could let my hair down a bit (OK, this is a joke, I always get a #3 razor cut) and kind of let some stream of consciousness thinking move from my brain to my fingers. Not a lot of swears, though - that’s just not my style.
I followed people I liked and admired. I said silly stuff, learned interesting things, tried to be kind and a good citizen. I learned a lot more about my home province through Twitter than I did by other means. Despite often resembling a cesspool, Twitter was a good place to hear and amplify the voices of people with many different needs and outlooks, all in one place.
One of my greatest joys on Twitter was when I was able to exchange a few Tweets with Andy Partridge, formerly of XTC. Talk about interacting with your heroes. I got to thank him for his work. Sadly, Andy got into trouble over time on Twitter: some of his views were not popular and I think it became very unpleasant for him there. Eventually he disabled his account - Twitter was less vibrant for me after he left. I’ve heard that he’s happier with a reduced social media presence.
Prescient, perhaps.
From Tweets to Squawks
Twitter has a new owner and CEO now - everyone in the world knows his name. He’s build successful automotive, power and space based businesses. He was one of the key movers and shakers for personal electronic commerce. Richest fellow in the world (so far) with a pretty big profile and at least 5 times as many kids as I have.
He’s gotten the financing to buy Twitter and turn it into a privately owned company and he’s doing some interesting things. By interesting I would tend to use the version of interesting that most closely correlates to awful.
The new owner CEO is throwing away both the playbooks and the rulebook. As far as I can tell, this is his prerogative.
I had the following concerns when all of this finally came to a head during the past couple of weeks:
he overpaid for the company, meaning there’s a tremendous amount of debt service to manage and pressure to a) increase revenues while b) severely gutting and cutting costs wherever possible
he hacked away key staff (not unusual for a takeover, granted) but may also be intending to screw them over financially (the same for the rank and file employees - apparently he has cut 50% of Twitter's workforce in the name of reducing costs)
he spouts seemingly spontaneous and unwise ideas about how to make things better - dude, corporate communications exists for a good reason
and in the name of “free speech”, he will supposedly re-platform the personification of avarice, someone who makes Logan Roy look like a man of charity and who openly admires autocrats and dictators
he’s obsessed with short term revenue (see overpaid for the company)
I could go on but bottom line is that the instability being introduced into both the leadership and the company itself is ridiculous. And I have had enough. I no longer wanted to be part of what would truly become a hellsite based on signals to date. Hateful speech is already on the rise again.
On Tuesday, November 2, 2022, more than 15 years after pecking out my first Tweet, I disabled my account. I let some of my pals know that I was going to depart and tried to do some kindnesses before I left. I believe my last Tweet was “That’s a wrap!”
I wasn’t easy to deactivate, even though the difficulty only existed in my mind. Leaving Twitter was like leaving home for the first time while simultaneously self-banishing myself. It may seem silly, but that’s how it felt. I probably posted close to 80,000 Tweets over 15 years. In less than a month they’ll be gone - for good.
I am sad that I will probably lose contact with people that I like a great deal. It may be harder for me to get certain information that I am used to getting. My admittedly short hair will stay right where it is.
But I don’t want to be part of a petri dish where some possibly deluded people think they can solve cultural and political issues like they would solve an engineering problem because that’s the way they think and, for now, they have deep financial backing. Or because they think they’ve taken control of a nimble pirate sloop instead of a colossal cruise ship.
Maybe I should happy that people say that they are interested in promoting free speech; that’s a key aim of any democratic society. I just don’t have any faith that they’ll achieve anything better than what already existed and in fact they may make things far worse. I don’t like the fact that everything seems to be conforming to one person’s vision, especially someone who has a poor track record for allowing free speech or playing fairly, judging by the amount of legal work they’ve engaged over the years.
Twitter has been a great source of inspiration for me for years. I’ve enjoyed most of my time there. But ever since I learned that there was a chance that Twitter would become a privately owned corporation, controlled by one individual, I decided it was time to build a new network in a new location, because I did not feel confident that the pending change would work for me under new ownership. Hence the creation of How About This on Substack - a new network, a new community.
Social media as public space
I’ve started to use Mastodon, which is a federated service of different servers that can talk to each other - the Internet in miniature. It’s similar but uncomfortable so far. I’ll give it a go.
Twitter has been called the Internet’s digital commons, like the bar where everybody knows your handle. Or an infinitely large coffee shop.
Me, I like to think of Twitter as a virtual Central Park. It can be a quiet, beautiful spot to congregate but it’s big enough that you can support many conversations and activities within. No one person owns Central Park: it’s owned by the city that surrounds it and that’s who maintains it. It’s funded by tax dollars. To me that’s the ideal Twitter: owned by all.
Of course that model is only fantasy. Twitter has always been a company and a publicly traded one most of the time. Most of us paid nothing to use it and so we used the hell out of it, creating an unimaginably large galaxy of content which became the backdrop for advertising, etc. Now it’s no longer a publicly traded company and power has been consolidated. The company has a lot of red ink in its ledger, leaking cash through holes to be patched with pink slips and tears. Some of the holes, anyway.
Maybe we should have been paying user fees all along.
You know, in a way this is all Steve Job’s fault. If he hadn’t pulled podcasts into iTunes then a little website named Odeo might have thrived.
On the other hand, we are all better for the good things that Twitter brought into our lives despite the harm it helped cause. At least that’s what I’d like to believe.
But that’s over, at least for me. Maybe I’m terribly mistaken about what’s going to happen and I hope Twitter will actually thrive and prosper. I wish everyone who stays there well.
I just believe it’s going to be a shit show. Even more than it already is.
Here’s what some other writers are saying about the current Twitter situation:
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I left FB in 2010, Twitter in 2016, and Instagram in 2018. You’ll be fine. 🙌
So glad you shared your thoughts on Twitter with us! I’m a begrudging Tweeter. That’s just how I feel about social media in general. There are some great things about social media, but, personally, I’m a long-form writing kind of person.