Going to have to dust this place off in the New Year as social media is just a dumpster fire 🔥, and with that I’m updating where I’m at, specifically saying cheerio to Twitter after 14 years.
I’ve had 2 accounts there my original from 2009 and my current one to escape a digital stalker for a bit from 2020.
In the good old days when I first started and social media was fun Twitter beat the glitter and cats gif of MySpace and seemed a little more like talking to real people. That was always it’s strength finding folks from all across the globe and learning about them, their culture, where they lived, and more.
My best Twitter experience from waaayyy back in the day was chatting with a few people from, well, everywhere, about one of my favourite comic books, The Crow, by James O’Barr. One of our geek band was running a movie website and reached out to James to see if he’d like to join us for a coordinated watch of the Brandon Lee movie and do a commentary throughout it live on Twitter and a Q & A afterwards. Shockingly he said yes so a time was set with the plan for everyone to start playing the movie at the same time, some of us (me) on VHS tape and chat as it played. With time differences that meant me watching at 3am but it was worth it. I got to chat to one of my favourite comic creators and as a bonus he sent me posters signed to ‘my favourite insomniac’ which I still treasure to this day.
It’s things like this and the wider good Twitter did in countries where it became a force to organise revolutions against evil powers or simply allowing a connection that meant someone wasn’t alone in a dark time that made it important. It wasn’t perfect and more and more it became a place where people trying to do harm tried their hardest, but it still had purpose.
Under Musk, who is completely insane and has no good intent within him despite his PR to the contrary, it lies in ruins. Twitter is increasingly a source of misinformation, dangerous misinformation, hatred of every type imaginable, and far beyond recovery, but perhaps that was always the plan in buying a $10 billion value app for $44 billion just to “own the libs” or “eradicate the woke” or some other man-child narcissistic bollocks that Musk spews forth daily to devotees and a bot engorged follower count.
I’d held on for as long as I could hoping he’d maybe step under a Space X engine during a test fire but alas it didn’t happen. Logging in and being greeted by vile idiots I don’t follow boosted by the system put in place to celebrate their dysfunctional view of the world and themselves, is something I don’t have to do ultimately but friends still there I didn’t want to abandon.
Thankfully however the vast majority of them have found sanctuary on Threads or Instagram, who’d have thought Zuck would provide a port in a storm, but I’m never doing FB again nope, or on Bluesky, and though I’m on that last one too I don’t trust Dorsey as he’s as bat-shit as Musk.
So with that the close of 2023 will be my last of posting on Twitter, no I’m not using the stupid letter name, and the end of my little era there. The account will remain to signpost people to where I’ve gone in case anyone’s interested and to stop someone else using my identity but I won’t be logging in after that apart from some sporadic housekeeping while the platform is functional. It’s a regrettable decision especially with some friends still hanging in there, but any day online that has less Nazi floating by on my screens will be a good thing. Now that Threads is launching in the EU hopefully more friends can escape and we can relax for a while until Zuckerberg does something stupid… yet again.
