Bad sign for Facebook?

 The most-read story at WaPo: 

Twitter will be the death of me

Damon Linker: "We open the app, we scroll, we hate, we lash out, we shut down — and then we do it all again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Because part of us loves to experience the addictive thrill of righteous indignation. And that, in the end, is what the app is really for."

The narcissism of small differences: Pew Research edition

Seems like a better way to put this would be: Large majorities of U.S. adults -- in both parties -- believe that social media is a distraction. Emphasizing that one party believes it slightly more than the other, when lots of people in both parties believe it, does more to emphasize our differences than our commonalities.

I miss the blogosphere

The blogosphere, back in the day, made me feel smarter and more informed.

The Twittersphere occasionally does that. Mostly, it makes me feel like it's really easy to get into a fight -- that it invites the forming and hardening of opinions, rather than creating a space to try to understand situations, or arrive at conclusions that don't adhere to a binary pole.

I'm still trying to figure out how to manage myself on Twitter. I would love it if I could find a read-only version of the website, but that doesn't seem possible. Self-control is required. Which, online, is not my specialty.

What I'm going to try to do:

* Spend less time reading Twitter.

* Use it, when posting, as a sort of RSS for my blog and Instagram. I'm hoping the time taken to explain myself better will A) keep me from knee-jerk posts, slow me down and B) thus make me use my brain more.

In other words: I'll do less responding directly to tweets. If I can't take time to craft a thoughtful comment that's blogworthy, then it's probably not worth the 10 seconds it takes to dunk.

I've tried and failed before to find ways to make Twitter work for me better. This may also fail. But I feel like I have to try.

Slowing Down

I'm edging my way back into social media. But it's kind of like edging your way back into the path of a fire hydrant: You can't get just a little wet — you're going to get soaked on contact.

Anyway, here's the mantra I'm trying to live by right now:

You don't have to express your opinion about everything.
You don't have to express your opinion about everything.
You don't have to express your opinion about everything.

It's possible, in fact, that the more opinion I put into the world, the less valuable any one opinion might be. So. Trying to control myself.

(Pauses.)

If I were to have an opinion about shit that doesn't matter much, though, it would be this:

Gov. Pence shouted to his wife, Karen, his closest adviser, at the other end of the table.

"Mother, Mother, who prepared our meal this evening?"

The legislators looked at one another, speaking with their eyes: He just called his wife "Mother."

Maybe it was a joke, the legislator reasoned. But a few minutes later, Pence shouted again.

"Mother, Mother, whose china are we eating on?"

Mother Pence went on a long discourse about where the china was from. A little later, the legislators stumbled out, wondering what was weirder: Pence's inability to make conversation, or calling his wife "Mother" in the second decade of the 21stcentury.

Mike Pence has a lot of ideas I find objectionable. If he chooses to address his wife in the manner of a 1930s innkeeper featured in a Frank Capra movie, so be it. Move on.

Why I'm Leaving Twitter. (I Think)

Last night, I deactivated my Twitter account.

I’ve done this a couple of times in the past when I wanted to dim the noise of social media that was flooding my brain, but I think this time it’s permanent. I’m not sure. The rush of constantly updated stuff — Information? Gossip? Debate? — has appeal to a guy like me. It’s possible, in fact, that I’m an addict.

Which is reason enough to pull away: I’ve spent too many evenings dicking around, flipping from Twitter’s stream to Facebook’s stream back to Twitter’s stream — all while a book sat just a few inches away from me, begging to be read.

Lest this come off as a “It’s not you, it’s me,” breakup letter, let me be clear: The problem isn’t just me — it’s also Twitter.

A little quiet, please? (What I gained from shutting off Twitter and Facebook for a few days.)

This afternoon was a rainy Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia, and thanks to the good graces of my wife I got to spend it in my favorite way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon anywhere: By myself in a coffee shop, with a good book in hand and frequent pauses to stare out the window.

The glory of it all was enhanced by a rash decision, made earlier this week in a fit of pique about something or other: I'd deactivated my Twitter and Facebook accounts. The decision alarmed a few of my friends, some of whom immediately contacted my wife through her Facebook account to ensure that I was OK. I was. I am.

But it has been an adjustment. Somewhere in the last couple of years, I've become accustomed to sharing any short, stray thought that crossed my mind with hundreds of friends and acquaintances. In the last few days, I've caught myself ready to share some joke about my 18-month-old son's activities -- only to catch and remind myself that, no, that's not something that's going to be shared right now.

Also in the last few years, I've become accustomed to compulsively checking up on what my friends and acquaintances have to say about their own lives. At times, my life on Facebook has resembled one long, never-ending class reunion with everybody I have ever known ever. Often it's been pleasant -- Whatever happened to that woman I used to have the crush on, anyway? -- but sometimes it has been burdensome: Thanks to Facebook, it's near-impossible to run away from home and completely reinvent yourself. You carry all your past relationships forward with you into your present, a steady accumulation of now that used to be once was. Sometimes it's good to unmoor yourself.

It also creates a lot of noise. Accumulate enough "friends" on Facebook and Twitter and barely 15 minutes goes by during waking hours that somebody, somewhere, isn't sharing something about themselves. In recent years, my normally sedate coffee shop habits had become increasingly frantic: Rather than read a page from a book, then sit and stare out a window -- or watch people in the shop do their own things -- I'd read a half-page, check my phone for social media updates, and repeat the process ad nauseum. The flow of data wasn't just interrupting my ability to read; it was devastating my chances to contemplate, to sit back and let my mind work around what it had just consumed.

Most of us, I think, have had the experience of working for hours on some insoluble problem -- only to arrive a solution 15 minutes after walking away from it. Our brains need time for repose, but the constant  stream of stuff makes those moments rarer and rarer.

So I shut off the stream.

This is probably not permanent. I'm unemployed right now, and Twitter and Facebook provide networking opportunities -- as well as promotion for projects like this blog -- that are difficult to duplicate with such ease in "meatspace." For an afternoon, though, I got to sit in a coffee shop and stare out the window to watch the rain fall down into the streets of Philadelphia. It was kind of glorious.