The author reflects on their long relationship with Twitter, highlighting its initial positive impact on their career and social life. However, they also describe the gradual decline of the platform into a source of anxiety and FOMO, ultimately leading to their departure.
The social media site was great at first. I met my best friend there and it made my professional dreams come true. But the secondhand stress was ultimately too muchIn 2009, when I joined what was then known as Twitter , I was bored, working a corporate job, blogging on the side, desperate to be a writer. Twitter made that happen: I posted my writing, gradually people started reading it and eventually some of them asked me to write for them, for money.
The combination of those elements made Twitter addictive and, for well over a decade, I opened it on waking and only stopped scrolling when I went to sleep. I reasoned it was a work necessity: the place where I could post my writing and connect with professional contacts; a way of tapping into ideas and interesting happenings. But I would have been there even if it wasn’t.
I would love to say I found the willpower to make a conscious decision to quit; actually, it was thanks to Elon Musk and menopause. Musk’s takeover killed any residual buzz stone dead, showing me boring or outrage-inducing stuff I had no interest in. X became a much less addictive product – a sort of methadone Twitter.and it felt as if I was seeing every single one, constantly flooded with unsolicited opinions and chatter.
Deactivating my account felt like first aid. Gradually, though, it has become a choice. Not an easy one: life without a ticker tape of rolling outrage, opinion and news is flatter. I used to feel plugged into the zeitgeist; now my answer to the “What’s happening?” question that appeared at the top of the X app is: “I have no idea.” That is tricky in my job.
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