The Slow (Personal) Fall of Twitter

I was not an early adopter to Twitter.  In terms of social media, honestly, the only platform that I really got into early was Facebook, and that's because I was the right age (I was in college) when it started to roll out, and was only available to college students.  According to my profile on Twitter, I have been a member since 2015, which would put me WELL behind the curve of when it took off as a pop culture phenomenon for myself & fellow Millennials, and more in-line with when your grandma would've joined Facebook.

I joined Twitter because of this blog, quite frankly.  At the time I was thinking still about monetizing it, and how to expand my readership in a meaningful way, and I figured the best way was to have my social media presence be identified with it.  I chose actively when I first came to this blog to not put my personal information on it (i.e. I'm "John T" not my real full name here), because I wanted to write about politics without it getting back to my day job, but with that it meant that I needed to forego having social media connected to my name, like I had (at the time-I've since deleted) on Facebook.

And while I created other social media connected with this (at one point, if you can believe it, this blog had a Tumblr associated with it, and my Letterboxd, which is still active & will remain so as it's the rare truly healthy social media, is 100% related to this blog), Twitter became my dominant social media pretty much instantly.  I made genuine friends through it, I went on dates through it.  I had people talk to me that I would've NEVER imagined would know my name or acknowledge me.  I still have screenshots of people like Octavia Spencer and Martha Plimpton and John Green acknowledging me on the app.  The algorithm quickly caught on for me, with a sea of political insights, cute boys, awards chatter, cooking videos, and more cute boys.  As someone who hadn't been to a gay bar since I was 25 (I was in my thirties when I joined), I learned about gay culture in a way I never would have otherwise (a great juxtaposition about me is that I am both VERY chatty with people I like and almost chronically introverted otherwise).  It was also a respite for me as I navigated the tricky lens of moving into my thirties as a single person, when most of my college friends were getting married and having children (and largely not having a place for me in their new lives).

Which has made the destruction of the site since 2022 all the more wrenching.  Twitter was never a perfect thing, with misogyny and defamatory speech always a constant threat in your comments (I definitely have been called a name or two as an openly gay person on there through the years), but it was a reliable place.  With the blue checkmark system, you could KNOW that the person tweeting was Valerie Bertinelli or Patty Murray-you could confidently get the thoughts of a crew of people, and the algorithm valued you staying on, so it showed you what you wanted to see, which for me resulted in essentially a newspaper designed specifically for my interests.  It was a worthwhile place with flaws.

But Elon Musk altered that.  He made it a cesspool of lies and deception.  Blue checkmarks ended, as did most attempts to patrol the comments.  The algorithm still existed (I can like one video about the stars of Heated Rivalry and then see 100 videos afterward), but it became pointless, and frequently nauseating & insipid.  Whereas before I wouldn't see a post from a Republican unless they were an elected official (i.e. someone I might research for this blog), now I'll see MAGA accounts ad nauseum.  It's less important that I am interested in a post, and more important that EVERYONE is getting this type of ragebait propaganda.  Any semblance of discourse disappeared from it-look at the comments section of ANY public figure, particularly a politician, and you will see just heinous lies and cruelty to the most innocuous of initial posts.  Twitter is, well, the bad place, and an increasingly useless one.

But...I still couldn't quit it.  There were practical concerns for this.  In a different era, I might've just broken down, bought a subscription to the Washington Post or the The New York Times and called it a day.  But those newspapers ALSO are right-wing rags at this point, and really there's no place left on God's Green Internet to get quality American journalism in a name brand way like I did on Twitter in its heyday.  Whereas I once had 50 reporters who I would follow from various quality news sources, now it's hard to tell the real from the slop.  Twitter, even in its hollowed shell, was easier to tell truth from fiction than much of the mainstream news that had been ruined by conservative billionaires.

It was also a place that I could advertise my blog.  I no longer have any aspirations of monetizing it-that disappeared a couple of years after I joined Twitter, but I do care if people read this.  I write things that I think are interesting, and I think other people might enjoy them.  I also care about putting quality analysis (of film, politics, and in-between) out into the world, into a world where that's increasingly hard-to-find.  I also enjoy the connections I make on the blog-I read every comment, and try to write on most of them, and I know that people find my articles through Twitter.

But I'll be honest-if those were the only things that caused me to be on Twitter, I would have largely set it aside.  The people who follow the blog regularly know how to check it without my updates, and with me moving onto private mode about a year ago, the readership links from the site aren't what they used to be (not to mention that Twitter's search functionality is basically garbage at this point, an underrated way that Musk ruined the site as it was once better than any other social media site).  And I could find news other ways if I really wanted to do so.  But Twitter filled up my time.  In a post-pandemic world, where we are increasingly spending less time with other people or are feeling more isolated, Twitter was a way to feel like I was in a crowd, like I was hearing a chattering class that actually cared about my opinions.  To some degree that was true (people DO like and share my opinions and conversations there), but in most ways it was a mirage...it FELT like something meaningful when Musk's stripping of the site for parts had largely created something plastic, cheap, nowhere near authentic.

And so I am increasingly stepping away from it.  I have such a history on it (and the site is so addictive), that I am curious if I can (or want) to actually quit it for good, or whether this is just another of one of many attempts to leave the site.  I have tried to do that cold turkey before (most recently in the wake of the 2024 presidential election), and I don't think that's a good formula for me.  But also, I'm uncomfortable with how much time I waste there, and am at the point where I think the doomscrolling is, perhaps, feeding an anxiety issue that has been festering since the pandemic and I am keeping alive by indulging in behaviors I don't really approve of in myself.  People talk about how addictive social media is and how much they wish they'd just quit it & how jealous they are of people not on social media...but they don't quit it, and they can't seem to move on.  Part of me wonders if all of the talk about us being addicted to our phones is less hyperbole and more reality, and like smoking in the 1950's, decades from now people will be stunned that we were willing to actively do such a thing.  For me, it doesn't seem healthy, and as one of my major New Year's resolutions was to reduce my screen time (the average person spends over 5 hours a day on their phone...last week I finally got mine below 3 hours, with the ultimate goal being 2 hours or less but we're taking this in steps), I plan on starting with Twitter, removing the app from my phone, and just relying upon it on my laptop...possibly ending it for good (or more likely, having it become something that's fazed out where it once was a default the second I opened my phone).  It's weird doing this, an app I once loved becoming an app that I feel is bad for me, and one that (like many people) I am reluctant to quit because of a strange combination of impulse, nostalgia, addictiveness, and genuine usefulness.  But that is the journey I'm trying to take in 2026.