Twitter and social media

I quit Twitter and Facebook a while back.

Most days I am happy with this decision. I'm not only happier, I'm also happier with who I am as a person.

I'm on Instagram, which I'm frustrated by in some ways, especially it being owned by Facebook, but it has most of the people I missed most out in the Internet ether. I tried to do Tumblr instead, because I like the functionality and lack of Facebook ownership marginally better, but too many people I know either never went there or migrated away at some point, so my support was largely lonely.

I'm also, for whatever it's worth on Letterboxd and Goodreads, which have only limited social benefits (or deficits). I'm also on LinkedIn, although, like everyone, I have no idea why, except, I guess, it's my key connection to a handful of people I don't wish to lose all connection to, even though we don't actually make any contact through it.

Similarly, I'm on Stage32, which sounded super promising when it was introduced to me, but I don't think I'm connected to even a single person I've had any social interaction with ever there, so I'm on it because I've never deleted it.

I haven't deleted my Quora, but all of their recent changes to make it more profitable, or whatever their motivation, have made it an intolerable hellhole in my opinion. That was too bad, because it was nice for a long, long time as an alternative tothe toxic environment of social media.

But the other day, I found myself wanting to update my Letterboxd account, including my picture, and was informed my picture there was attached to my Twitter account. So, I created a new Twitter account.

Then I was involved in a discussion with people who were super pleased with Twitter and their activity there. So I peeked in through my new account that I set up just to peek in. I looked at the accounts of some of my favorite people who are not on or at least not active on Instagram.

Now, I want to be clear, this was kind of a random assortment of people. And these were people who, if some combination of them got together at a bar or coffee shop near me on a regular basis, I'd be unbelievably excited to go every week. I'd update my life schedule to make it work. I'd travel a mildly inconvenient distance. All of that.

But on Twitter?

As Marshall McLuhan taught us, the medium is the message. Twitter is a place to declare things not to listen.

And, yeah, I'm not still not feeling that right now.

Even if you're declaring something I agree with like, "Hey, Neil is awesome!", who cares? I've had altogether too much declaration at this point in my life.

I'm leaving that new account up. I might post blog posts there, because, why not? I might leave it for the eventuality that I find having a Twitter account necessary and/or more desirable. I certainly left my original Twitter created and unused for a long time before using it to any extent. Perhaps that'll make sense again.

Or perhaps I'll be that careless with my own needs again.

Who the fuck knows?