For me, at least. I’ll deactivate my account as soon as I have time to download my archive and then delete all my tweets. Twitter’s new ownership motivated me to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: stop using Twitter. The value of Twitter was never as high as the costs.
There was value. It’s not like when I quit Facebook several years ago. I loathed everything about Facebook by the end of my time on that platform. Stopping was simple and I didn’t miss it. Twitter was different. I disliked some aspects of it, but there were plusses. I used it to broaden my horizons by following people I wouldn’t have been able to interact with in meat space. People from different ethnic groups. Disability activists. LGBTQIA voices. I learned a lot. Twitter also provided humor, information, and sometime an outlet for my creative silliness.
The drawbacks were more significant. As an easy diversion and distraction, Twitter degraded my ability to focus and think. The filth of Twitter occasionally bubbled up, even though I was careful to curate who I followed. That didn’t do wonders for my emotional equilibrium or mental health. (The use of ethnic slurs spiked as soon as the transfer of ownership occurred. I don’t need that in my life.) Leaving Twitter will go a long way toward improving the quality of my intellectual life.
Twitter isn’t worth being part of anymore. Many of the voices I follow are leaving, anyway, and its usefulness will only decay from here. Time to go.
