Bye Bye Birdie

Last word on Twitter

Before Elon Musk took over Twitter I both adored and hated that beloved hellsite. Sometimes I wanted to get away from it, but it was hard to break the addiction. So I guess I should at least thank the muskrat for that, because oh boy, did I go from “I wish I knew how to quit you,” to “Oh, that was easy” in two weeks flat.

I haven’t used Twitter for several days now, since the poll to allow the Orange Menace back on. Especially after it ended at the infamous cursed ratio of 52:48. That was a sign. Now last I saw, Trump hasn’t actually come back to his newly unlocked account and, has said he won’t. (Even Trump thinks Musk is a loser. Let that sink in. Apparently he’d lose money if he did come back anyway.) And I wouldn’t have to see his tweets, cause I’d block him. It’s just the toxic miasma his presence creates through the whole site that puts me off.

The more recent announcement about reinstating most accounts that were blocked for various infractions of the T&Cs involving hate, harassment etc has just put the cherry on the 💩 cake.

I was already tired of the negativity and toxicity of Twitter. I tried not to get into too many arguments on there, because, a) who has time? And b) what’s the point? Nobody changes their mind. But I couldn’t resist it sometimes. You know how it is when someone is Wrong on the Internet™ and needs to be told how wrong they are.

The constant stream of SOMETHING NEW FOR YOU TO BE OUTRAGED ABOUT! is not good for me. It can lead to such a feeling of helplessness. There’s a lot of stuff about American politics on there. And of course, it’s important. But I’m not in America. I can’t do a thing about any of it. At least if I was in America I could vote. But I’m not. So it’s just a constant reminder of how crap things are and that I can’t do a damn thing to change it.

And worst of all in that time since the would-be King of Mars bought the company, is the gloating of the Troll Army. They don’t care about Twitter. They just see it as a place to harass and abuse people. They reply to tweets with “cope”, “pronouns in bio” or just their favourite emoji 🤣🤣🤣🤣. They think anyone who doesn’t like what’s happening to Twitter is a free speech-hating lib, “triggered” by Elon Musk’s excessively lame jokes. They don’t care about the staff who worked at Twitter (who they seem to think did no work at all and spent all day making woke plots to destroy free speech.) They don’t care about people whose livelihoods and jobs depend on Twitter. They definitely don’t care about those who have built communities of disabled or chronically ill people as an important support network.

Despite all that, I really will miss it. I was on there for a long time and had some great times. It was the only social media site I was using. There’s nothing to compare when some kind of fast moving event is happening for example. I’ve had some FOMO the past few days, and of course I miss the people I’ve left behind there. But I’m settling in to Mastodon and starting to build a new timeline to enjoy. I’m not trying to make it a one-to-one replacement for Twitter. Even if people are nicer, mindless scrolling is still mindless scrolling. I need to get more from it and give more to it. We ex-Tweeps will take a while to be retrained out of Twitter goblin mode. Like feral cats, we need to learn how to trust.

But my time on Twitter is over. I haven’t deactivated yet - (see other post for why not) but I’m done. And I’m not going to make any more blog posts about it. Fuckity bye, Twitter. Turns out I knew how to quit you all along.