Five Years of Quitting Twitter

I also quit Twitter a long time ago. Unlike OP I don’t feel I’ve missed out on any important conversations. Twitter is awful at being a communication platform.

There’s no concept of on-topic or off-topic, so in order to get the little morsel of useful information you have to wade through political arguments, pictures of pets and who knows what else. Using Twitter feels like a chore.

In place of Twitter I use discord, various programming subreddits, HN, and I get way more exposure to important information when it’s not hidden amongst every shade of anger and banality.

Twitter has enabled me to observe elite academics & lawyers engage in candid discussions of my field.

I’ve learned so many things through observing their interactions. Couldn’t get that anywhere else.

41 years of no Twitter here. Feels great. Never have to waste time sorting through a firehose of information to find one drop of something useful. Never have to deal with the terrible UI and UX. If anyone's armchair comedian one liners is good enough, a friend will send me the link .

I have anxiety and depression.

So while I deeply care about politics, it's really not good for me. At least, a little more acutely than it is for others. Slight uptick in daily stress for me will ruin my sleep for weeks. It's a slow build but it happens. And I fall asleep just fine. It's the staying asleep that doesn't work. Melatonin, valerian root, lemon balm, l-thenanine, weighted blankets, good sleep hygenie, all in combination will not stop my mind from racing at 3am about SOMETHING.

I have several interests - classic film, music (typically older), tech (decreasingly)

And I can't find any place that doesn't drag it into modern politics.

The way people "discuss" on these platforms - reddit Twitter, etc is so toxic. And frankly it's made me toxic in how I reply to people once goaded into taking the bait

These platforms and algorithms and mobs are feed off negativity.

Every couple of months I'll get a reddit or Twitter account. I'll enjoy it for a while and then the politics leaks in more and more and I just end up deleting my account (and all my comments or contributions too)

I tried going back to magazines. But the phone is always "there" and my magazines are not and I just end up not reading them

Phones have changed impulses and behaviors and after 10 years of it, almost - I've found those behaviors harder to break than stopping smoking or cutting caffeine or eating poorly.

I'd ditch my phone all together.. But I work for a fortune 500 big tech company in a technical role and we know how that goes.

All I know is I hate social media. Hate..

But there's virtually no modern way to really engage with people on any given subject - nutrition, fitness, classic films, whatever. Without all the pitfalls of those competing mobs.

Going back to the remaining forums sounds nice but they've become content ghettos.

My only use of Twitter is as a write-only tool to shame companies about their terrible product. Most of the time I am ignored, but sometimes I am not and I get resolution to my problem.

I also use it to vote on social issues, the value of which is impossible to weigh.

I quit twitter years ago, too - but every other social media platform is filled with screenshots of the very worst of twitter, pretty much all the time. You can quit all you like, but Twitter is inescapable.