Three Years Without Twitter

I am grateful I have not spent the last three dreadful years on Twitter.

On January 22, 2020, I took what I thought would be a short hiatus from Twitter. One, two, and now three years later, I am very happy with my decision. Hey, I quit Twitter long before it was cool! And no, I have no interest in joining Mastodon (if that is even still at thing).

Comments

[Doug Heffernan]

Glad to hear that blackman is not just happy, but very happy. Because he just doesn't give off the "very happy" vibe much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every morning I try to think of something which I grateful to myself for.

[Doug Heffernan]

Absolutely! Because in almost all cases, it could always be worse.

Whatever arbitrary fortunate benefits befall upon me throughout the course of temporal determinism, I thank my lucky stars for each any every such benefit!

[Frank Drackman]

Can you blame him with that Weird Al Hairstyle? I'd rather be bald.

[Doug Heffernan]

He let himself go during the plague. He was even eating lots of pizza slices while giving zoom lectures. Hopefully with in-person lectures back in force, he is eating less pizza during class. But apparently he is keeping the plague hairdo.

[Krychek_2]

Now let's see if he can go three years without posting anything here.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

You quit Twitter before it was cool? I can top that: I never signed up for Twitter. Nor, for that matter, Facebook.

[defaultdotxbe]

Meh, it's like quitting smoking, or drinking, or drugs vs never having done it in the first place. Just doesn't carry the same cachet since there's no personal growth.

[Frank Drackman]

I went 3 years without jerking off once.
Oh wait, make that 3 days.

Frank

[weibullguy]

I went 3 minutes just this morning.

[Frank Drackman]

OK, it's not quite the same as John McCain's years in captivity, but that's what you get when only a small % serve.

[teiwnc]

I only signed for Twitter recently. I like it because I feel more anonymous there…or at least anonymous to my friends and family. I also use it as a place to find news articles on topics Im interested in. I block anything that annoys me and vent to people who share my sensibilities when I need to vent.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Who needs the New York Times, Washington Post, or a legitimate local news source when you have . . . Twitter?

Is our ostensible adults learning?

[Frank Drackman]

You tell us, Jerry.

[Bill H.]

God forbid you receive any information outside of official state outlets.

[John F. Carr]

A problem with Twitter in 2022 was it pushed undesirable content too aggressively at users despite their attempts to block it. Let's say you hate Sean Hannity and block him. You could still see retweets of and replies to Hannity. If you click in anger, you have incremented one of their engagement metrics and the algorithm learns to show you more Hannity-once-removed. If you quit Twitter, the algorithm doesn't know why.

[David Nieporent]

A five sentence post (if you count the subhead): every one includes the word "I," and there are seven instances overall. That's our Josh.

[nhytgbvfr]

Seven "I"s? Is he channeling his inner Lightbringer?

[Frank Drackman]

There's no "I" in "Idiot"

[OtisAH]

I deactivated the day Musk let Turnip back on like I promised myself. I still stop by to check for breaking news, which tbh is mostly only useful today if I’m interested in exciting NFT and crypto opportunities.

[John F. Carr]

Cory Doctorow discusses the life cycle of social media companies like Twitter, from being nice to users in the beginning to abusing paying and non-paying users alike in the hunt for metrics and revenue: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Blackman. We’ve got Blackman here!

See? Nobody cares.

[Orbital Mechanic]

I just don't see the virtue here they way that it seems to be expected. "Not being on Twitter" is simply not a strength of character marker that too many people think it is.

You could use Twitter as a means to get greater visibility (more clicks) for the blog postings you spend so much effort on. If you did that it does not automatically mean you need to respond to and get involved in all the pointless discussions and memes that might get posted in response. Or respond to anyone else's tweets. It isn't that hard I promise.

If what you are saying is "I would rather have 100 quality readers than tens of thousands of junk readers" yes you could form a somewhat laudable policy around that. But if you are saying "I would rather have 100 quality reader then have 30,000 quality readers" that isn't virtue. That's just being a curmudgeon.

[David Nieporent]

I just don’t see the virtue here they way that it seems to be expected. “Not being on Twitter” is simply not a strength of character marker that too many people think it is.

It's the modern day equivalent of bragging, "I don't even own a tv."

[M L]

I find it pretty useful to occasionally follow Twitter links and read a post, then read a few replies and the related items that show up below the post, and maybe click on a few profiles.

You see all kinds of interesting stories and posts that you never would see otherwise.

But none of that even requires an account (yet). Nor the app. It is just reading a web page, like anything else. And it certainly doesn't require the horrific step of actually posting or participating.