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."

"Most days it felt like attaching my mouth to an exhaust pipe and then inhaling"

Yeah:

He diagnosed me right away. “Well, so this is a delicate topic, and it's often been difficult to talk about, but there's some kinds of people who particularly get Twitter addictions and they're often journalists—”

I laughed sadly. “And people who are addicted to Twitter are like all addicts—on the one hand miserable, and on the other hand very defensive about it and unwilling to blame Twitter.” (Shortly after this conversation, I quit Twitter for about three weeks. It was soothing. Actually, it was life-changing. As of this writing, for reasons I don't understand—but also do, all too well, because of Lanier—I'm back on the platform. Please kill me.)

Starting over, again

A decade ago, fed up with my cratering life and career, I deleted my Twitter account, scrubbed my blog's archives and started over again. Today, I'm doing something similar.

I spend too much time on Twitter, reacting to Twitter, and regretting my instant takes on Twitter. So I'm letting my primary account go inactive later this week -- we'll see if that lasts, honestly, I've tried this before -- and starting a new account that will just be a feed from this blog. I'm not going to follow anybody there.

I am trying to slow my roll.

Twitter is bad for you. It is bad for democracy. I've felt this for awhile, yet I've stuck. Because I want to be a part of the conversation. But that's my ego talking, frankly. If I can't give up a little bit of trying to have an audience in order to do my incremental bit to back away from the trends that are consuming us ... well, that kind of makes me selfish, doesn't it?

Even now, I'm not entirely willing to forego the chance to be heard, which is why the new Twitter account. I am not an angel. And I have to figure out a new way to seek out and listen to voices -- including a number of Black and women writers -- that I previously encountered mainly through Twitter.

Again: I may not make this work as well as I like. And compared to the disaster that is befalling our country -- the pandemic, the economy, racial unrest, Trump -- it's an utterly small, insufficient move to try and change how I engage in discourse. Blogging is probably not going to be a thing again. Too bad. But I can only do what I can do. This is how I start.

PS: If you want to talk back to me, leave a comment! I'll talk back! And I'll curate comments so that angry people don't get to make it a cesspool for everyone! Not that I'm expecting a huge audience.

The best way for me to do sustained reading these days...

 

...is to deactivate my Twitter account. 

I don't mean log out. I mean deactivate it entirely. It's easy enough to reactivate, so the practical difference between logging out and deactivating probably isn't that great. But, psychologically, it slows down my tendency to check in and then keep scrolling, scrolling.

This afternoon, I deactivated my account and read two chapters of David Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass, and a few chapters of MOBY DICK. My head feels better for slowing down.

Personal update

Taking a little bit of a Twitter break right now to get my head clear.

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.