Bye Bye Twitter

Using Twitter is playing with fire when it comes to your life and your reputation. You can lose your job or suffer other similar losses for momentary stupidity or carelessness—or even just for writing something that can be misinterpreted. There’s so much questionable content on Twitter that it’s also easy to embroil yourself by accidentally retweeting it. In the analog world, statements can usually be clarified in the moment. “Did you mean what I think you just said?” That doesn’t always happen, but it’s more likely than on Twitter. Our statements also tend to expire with the air that carries them. This freedom may start to disappear with the possibility of Google Glasses recording all speech. Europeans won the right for their online lives to be forgotten by Google. One day we may cloak our speech in scrambling technology, which we turn off only when we give explicit permission to be recorded. Until then, I’m going to reserve my online expressions to carefully considered media such as this blog. There wasn’t any specific incident that pushed me over the edge. I just sense the potential for one in the future.

I’m not a politician, and I don’t have products to sell, so why am I constantly marketing myself? You may be different from me. You may have a job that requires you to market certain wares, including yourself. I feel fortunate that I’m not in that position except for when I’m job hunting, which I’m not right now. So much of Twitter is pure marketing. Why subject myself to it? Why not choose the ability to discern and think for myself? Why not seek out the voices I find wise, rather than what I’m exposed to by marketers? I’ve used Twitter to market this blog, but I realized that I’m mostly writing this blog to record my own thoughts. If people tune in, cool, but I’ve stopped marketing it.

Twitter is just about as bad as Facebook. Twitter and Facebook are seemingly very different. I used to think Twitter was better because it tends to shoot you into other websites suggested by the people you follow rather than try to hold you in place like Facebook does. It also makes it easier to interact directly with just about anyone, unlike Facebook where public figures are a few steps removed. You can “like” celebrities on Facebook and leave comments for them, but it’s harder to rouse them directly the way a direct tweet can. Despite the differences, the two companies are in the very same business, selling you to corporations. When I quit Facebook more than a year ago, Twitter became its replacement for me to the tune of 1000 tweets. I think I always knew that it was kind of a false choice—like thinking Coke is any better than Pepsi. They both are corrosive to health, at least for me.

It changes people. I’m a fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s writings, but I can hardly stand his persona on Twitter where he gets into quarrels, spouts off rather randomly (pun only somewhat intended), and generally goes against his stated desire to be a private person and not a public intellectual. I think he’d be better off quitting too, especially since he writes in his books about via negativa, removing things that undermine our ability to live well and trusting negative rather than positive advice.

It involves spending time writing to strangers rather than my family and friends. Think about it. I do realize that you can only allow your family and friends to follow you on Twitter. Maybe that’s a good option. Luckily, most of my family and friends are too sensible to be on Twitter. I’m certain I’m missing many family photo albums on Facebook. That is lamentable, but not worth signing back up for an account. Perhaps it will give me an excuse to start calling family members. “Hey, I haven’t seen you guys in forever, especially since I’m not on social media. Could we visit sometime?”

Community is centered on my doorstep, not in cyberspace. I think I’ll let this one stand without further comment.

It’s just not for me. If you use Twitter daily and love it, that’s your right. I’m judging it, but by my own lights. If you love it and see no reason to stop, tweet on my friend.

Last but not least, the way reciprocity works on Twitter bugs me. Follow me and I’ll follow you back. Coded hashtags designed to signal readiness to play this game of stranger accumulation. Drop these same strangers, and they’ll drop you. And then there are a few people I know who didn’t follow me back. Is this because they don’t reciprocate, or because they simply don’t notice in the avalanche of their Twitter feeds? These kinds of questions could drive me crazy with a kind of internet-based palace intrigue. Forget about it! Life is complex enough without needless head games.