Quitting tweeting

It feels like it’s been ten years, but it’s only been like… six months? Anyway, it’s time.

tl;dr: I don’t like Twitter’s changes at all, latest changes less so; I moved to Mastodon @pjw@soc.paweljw.al.

Write-only media

Let me preface by saying: I always treated Twitter as largely write-only medoum. I had few meaningful interactions on Twitter, and when I had them it was usually with people I already knew. I don’t have a massive presence on Twitter. I don’t get my news from Twitter. I don’t “build my personal brand” there.

Bottom line: neither do I have skin in the game, nor do I depend on it for my personal wellbeing¹.

The many catastrophes

When setting out to write this post, I reviewed TechCrunch’s post-Musk Twitter Timeline. I would find it depressing if I relied on Twitter for anything in my life. I understand the people who already left, and why they left at that particular point.

I just… I guess I couldn’t be bothered. I post maybe a Tweet a month when I don’t write blogs, and I didn’t write anything for almost two years. (That’s a separate can of worms we’ll open at some other time.) I will ocasionally retweet something - but crucially, when someone else sends a Tweet to me. I don’t doomscroll. I don’t even normal scroll.

I guess I liked having a builtin audience for my blogging. I wrote something, I dropped a link on Twitter, got a few clicks, got a shot of shallow-yet-satisfying dopamine and went about my day.

So why now?

There are two reasons for my departure. One: I am not verified on Twitter. I never had the OG checkmark, due to being a relatively unknown person, and even if I did I’d lose it in the latest round of changes. I’m not paying PLN 36 for Twitter Blue. I don’t see it bringing PLN 36 worth of value to my life every month. I could buy an edition of Forbes and laugh at all the self-important suits for half that.

And for this grave act of defiance, I’ll be rewarded with obscurity. I don’t pay, so my blog posts and occasional bread photo would get de-ranked into the bottom of anyone’s search. Ironically enough, state-controlled media (be it Chinese, Russian or Polish) recently got their labels removed, so I’d be downranked harder than Russia Today. That’s so bad it’s laughable.

So: my ability to blast something I consider mildly useful to whom it may concern would be highly limited unless I paid for it. On the flip side, state-controlled content will have more ability to proliferate. That’s a bit rich for my tastes.

Moving on to Mastodon

I stood up an instance of Mastodon for myself. It was a more taxing process than I had hoped, but there it is. Feel free to follow me there; expect blog links and bread pictures.

Now, time to tweet one last thing: this post.

Hero image by Manfred Richter from Pixabay