My phone has felt like a lifeless husk in my pocket for several weeks now. Less useful, more forgettable. I left Twitter a month ago, fleeing the ugly sadness shooting out of its orifices. The #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag shouldnāt have to exist, and it is just ONE of the many injustices that were being gutted and put on display for the world to rubberneck. It felt like a good time to manage my Twitter addiction.
What have a I seen since then? Not much. The world feels more continuous now, time is no longer stitched together with incessant updates, random thoughts, or dumb jokes. The first few days were weird, my thumb absently swiping through home screens looking for something that wasnāt there, but that passed much quicker than expected. Sure, there were a few days (3!) I jumped on briefly to pore through my news/science feeds and comment on some big stories (the Antares rocket explosion, the electoral bloodbath, Philae landing on a fucking COMET), but for the most part Twitter was easy to avoid.
⢠I signed up for a bunch of email newsletters from writers and general weirdos to keep my inbox lively.
⢠I walked to and from work consciously contemplating the physical world around me and found that my cityās daily hustle is just as boring as I thought it would be, but watching the leaves change was great.
⢠I became a mega-fuck-ton more productive at work.
⢠I read even more and watched much basketball without the usual interruptions Twitter invited. I could savor these things better.
⢠I wrote tiny emails to my family sharing things I loved with them. I bugged my friends with more links (this urge to share was difficult to quell).
⢠The world felt more confined, but Twitterās presence felt smaller. No one is on Twitter.
⢠I realized I got a lot of my news from Twitter and that my web surfing hinged on it.
⢠I had to relearn how to treasure little, random moments instead of just writing them down and vomiting them on the world.
⢠I saw a lot of people staring at their phones, even on bicycles!
Things that didnāt happen:
⢠I didnāt get more creative work done. In fact, I may have gotten less done, somehow. I think I just started reading more instead.
⢠I didnāt reconnect with nature or the world around me. At least, not in some mind altering revelatory sense. In fact, I felt less connected, I felt more alone. It wasnāt the worst thing, but I felt like I was missing the proxy digital presence of legitimate friends. I had not expected this.
But my biggest revelation was that Twitter had been my public-facing scratch pad for years, a lazy outlet for my thoughts and inspirations being fanned by the exposure to the creative weirdos and alcoholics I follow on there. Also, that Iām a bit of an introvert without Twitter.
People constantly advocate for the "necessity of face timeā. āOur kids wonāt know how to interact without it,ā they say. Well, from my own experience without social media these past weeks, I didnāt seek out more face time with people. I barely reached out more via email than I already did. I just lived with same level of face time I had before. My guess is that this is why you hear older folks say āmore often than we ever willā that they have friends they miss and lost contact with long ago even though they still live in the same town. Socially, there was probably about the same level of face time 20 years ago as there is now. We all settle into routines and are too lazy, exhausted or busy to go visit neighbors/friends more regularly than we already do. At least with social media, despite all its other problems, thereās a chance to check in with those people in our spare moments. But again, this is subjective. Feel free to disregard it.
Eventually, the thought of going back on Twitter filled me with anxiety. Mainlining all that information again seemed overwhelming, and thatās when I realized I was addicted to a lot of crap on there. 95% of my feed is not worth reading, thatās why I have lists (small curated selections of people I choose to pay more attention to than others), and probably 70% of those updates arenāt worth reading, either.
The whole experience has been a mixed bag with its unforeseen losses (exposure to the weirdos, digital camaraderie) but increased quality of life (stemmed interruptions, connection to immediate environment). Ultimately, I feel like my life can be richer with social media than without it. But if I want back in, Iāll need to wade carefully, stick to the shallows and avoid the rip tide. I'm still on the fence though.
IDEAS: Better curated lists, more proxy/robo tweets (tweets delivered via 3rd party services), no apps at work.