Last week, I broke up with Twitter.
It was tough, especially when I reflect back on the early days of the relationship. But, sometimes things change, become misaligned, tangled. I began to notice that whenever I logged on, it made me angry. It made me sad. It made me anxious and repulsed and hopeless.
It was beginning to make me a different person.
So finally, I decided to be my own advocate for mental health and happiness, and delete my account.
Over the years Twitter had served me well. I enjoyed the 140-character brevity, the community of shared interests, and the ability to discover raw news, as it broke. If you live in LA, you will understand this reference; Twitter became my KNX. Especially when I felt that rumble beneath my feet and wondered if it was a garbage truck or a magnitude 3.0.
It’s not you. It’s us.
Twitter changed and so did I. It had devolved from an exciting, immediate source of news and community reporting, to a place of vitriol. More and more, it became inhabited by anonymous, angry people, politicians and bots, spewing hate, rebuttal, misinformation and personal bias.
It took its toll. So, I ended it.
The writing was on the wall for some time. Yet, like in some strained relationships, I looked away when the angry face appeared. I thought that if I searched enough, I could circumvent the caustic point/counterpoint and relentless bullying, to find the magic that once was.
And although I hung in there on the personal side, on the professional side, I advised my clients away much earlier. It no longer felt brand safe. I would cringe whenever I saw a promoted tweet nestled among controversial and unsavory viewpoints. Plus, it never had the marketing tools or proper protocols to make the reward worth the risk. In fact, it never really did. The ad units always felt clumsy, awkward and relied on behavior that didn’t really happen in the real world. Who was going to sign up in a tweet, to get a reminder tweet when a car launches? Certainly no one I knew.
In fairness, it was not entirely Twitter’s fault. Rather, the blame must also fall on the crowd it often attracts. The lure of anonymous venting, bullying and spreading disinformation that can have a real-world impact, is a strong dog whistle to unsavory opportunists. And being able to huddle and distribute under the benign cover of a hashtag makes it easy for bots to make falsehoods spread. When you consider that almost 400 million accounts have absolutely no followers, you understand why.
Yet, I must also take personal responsibility for my own actions in getting to this point. I spent a good portion of the past 4 years in the activist feed, petitioning for equality. That feed is often a target to opposing viewpoints, and many share and reply to angry political and social tweets which ended up in my feed. Yet, the algorithm of Twitter would also cater related and highly-charged hashtags and tweets my way, which became unhealthy to read and process.
So, it was a shared mess.
Break the wrist, walk away. Break the wrist, walk away.
With so many people spitting venom at the world, at opposing viewpoints, and probably at themselves (if you dig deeper), it was finally time to take my own advice, break the wrist and walk away.
Break the wrist. Walk away.
But it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. As in real life, leaving a toxic relationship can be hard. You make excuses for the other person, allow behavior that breaks boundaries, in the hopes that it will change. And when habits form, a dabbling of co-dependence may peek through, creating an emotional linkage that makes the split even harder. Considering Twitter was the first screen I’d check in the morning, and the last one at night, I knew it would be a hard habit to break.
Nevertheless, I decided to give up my front row seat to the toxic political, social, celebrity and societal fistfights that continually unfolded in front of me. To leave behind the snap judgements, blood lusts and personal wars, made public.
But as I reflect, I do miss the early days, and hope this ship of 300 million rights itself. But for now, I will simply enjoy my days in port, escaping the discontent of this angry social sea.
And be on my own, whenever I feel the ground shake below me.
#goodbye
