I Left Twitter Two Years Ago (Here’s How It Went)
Twitter has been an important part of my life; for ten years it was the main place I hung out on the Internet. There I made friends with whom I still communicate every day. I met people who became my editors, and that’s how I built my career. I felt a sense of community with other internet weirdos from around the world. This is a major part of why I am who I am today.
And I haven’t used it for two years. In 2022, I quietly left Twitter . I still write, but not quite: I have an automated script that pushes links to my articles there. I also set up Beeper so that DMs can still contact me, which is what I recommend – I can stay up to date on everything without even logging in.
But other than that, I left. I don’t scroll, respond, or see ads. I’m guessing that at some point Beeper and my automation will break, at which point I’ll delete my Twitter account.
If you’re reading this and you’re still on Twitter (it’s X now, of course), it’s probably because you’ve been thinking about doing the same thing, but something is keeping you there. I’ll share what I was thinking about before I left; maybe this will help you make a decision. I will also talk about where I found online community after leaving.
Twitter is already dead
Twitter was important to a lot of people for a lot of reasons, and a lot of them left. I’m writing this two days after XOXO , a conference full of idealists who believe the Internet can be a force for good, no matter what. The collective mourning on Twitter at the festival was palpable.
And it makes sense: Twitter was a website where people could hang out, joke, create things, and maybe even solve problems. The site has sparked so many wonderful projects and friendships, not to mention valuable activity. But all this was a very long time ago. The truth is that for most people, Twitter was more bad than good for a long time – long before people bought it.
I’m not here to glorify the early days of Twitter. The truth is that the site and the community around it have always had problems. However, at some point, the negative aspects of the site outweighed the positive ones. The exact time when this happened varies from person to person, but I think the shift started around 2014. If you don’t know what Gamergate is, great: move on with your life. But something about this particular campaign of persecution destroyed my ability to be benevolent. Virality has gone from a reward to a punishment, and overall things have become less fun.
And guess what? There’s no good reason to stay on a social network that isn’t fun. The exact time when shifting becomes necessary may be different for you—there are many factors involved—but I encourage you to at least pay attention to the scrolling. Are you enjoying yourself? Or teach something? Or are you just generally feeling bad?
My brain works better now
In 2020, my therapist asked me if I needed Twitter for my job. We only spent two sessions together, and she already knew that this site was harmful to my brain. It was during a period of isolation when the thought of giving up one of the tools I used to feel connected to the world seemed impossible.
She was up to something. When I left Twitter in 2022, I noticed pretty quickly that I felt less anxious. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m no longer exposed to a constant stream of negativity. At some point, Twitter became dominated by people who deliberately say terrible things to get attention, and people who should know how to pay attention to them by throwing attention at them. And sure, sometimes those dunks were funny, but the thing about making fun of terrible people all day long is that you spend a significant portion of your day paying attention to terrible people.
The things you pay attention to shape your brain. For me, Twitter made things worse. I was amazed at how much less anxiety I felt after leaving and how much easier it was to focus on work and enjoy hobbies. I don’t know if the same benefits await you, but I believe there’s a good chance you’ll be surprised.
I found new (and better) online spaces
Over the past few years, I’ve gradually taught myself to enjoy the Internet again. These days I mostly hang out on Mastodon and I really like it. I reconnected with some of my favorite people from Twitter and met lots of new ones. I also found that there are people there who actually click links, read articles, and respond to certain points in the article rather than just reacting to the headline. The fact that I found this surprising only shows how terrible a place Twitter has become and how low my expectations of online interaction have become.
An even bigger revelation was the launch of my newsletter, Connectivity . It’s small at the moment—only 300 people or so—but it’s given me more of a sense of community than any social network has done in a long time. People write back to me. Some of them are friends, some are family, and some are strangers, but a lot of good conversations were made there.
These approaches may or may not work for you—you may need to try something else. My point is that you can rebuild online community in other places, and with just a little effort you can be reminded why online community is valuable in the first place.
Sometimes it all ends and that’s okay
Many XOXO speakers, not to mention people I’ve talked to, have referred to the social network as “zombie Twitter,” and that’s a great description. The soul of Twitter is gone and is long gone. What remains is a shell of something that roamed the earth long after its natural lifespan had ended.
Most zombie movies have a point where a character has to kill or zombie a loved one, usually while another character says the loved one is already dead. And here’s what I’m here to say: Twitter is already dead. In some ways, I’m grateful that Whatshisname rebranded the site, allowing us to separate the site that was from the site that is.
Twitter is dead. We can mourn this, and we should. But some of the mourning continues.