Bird Watching

Who was the dude who said he measured his life out in cups of coffee? That’s kind of like my last decade and change with Twitter. I’ve been on there almost from the beginning. Living out in the wilds of Connecticut, it became my substitute social life, a way for me to connect with people over stupid shit, to yell about guns, to make a fool of myself (both intentionally and not), and to discover new voices. The air was always a little rank, of course, because people and machines that act like people understood that the platform could be manipulated and abused. For a long time, though, I felt like the good outweighed the bad. That’s changed.

What changed isn’t so much the engagement. That was always suss (a word I have never before used and am unlikely to use again but it felt apropos in this context). What changed for me, more than anything, is that the site has become, frankly, boring. So many of the good and interesting voices have left. What remains are the diehards and the dickheads. I still love the diehards but the diehard to dickhead ratio has become too unbalanced for my liking. Increasingly, Twitter feels like that playground you used to hang out at as a kid, but whose swing sets have fallen into rusty disrepair. Yeah, you can still get your swing on, but you risk tetanus and getting stabbed by the juvenile delinquents who hang out along the chainlink fence. What Facebook became to the grandparent set, Twitter is increasingly becoming to Elon’s blue checkmark brigade and the increasingly desperate bots begging me to tell them whether or not I like their photos. (SPOILER ALERT: I do not.) Twitter is suffering from the same vicious cycle that kills any place where the best and brightest pack up and go. Once the brain drain starts, it’s almost impossible to lure people back.

Twitter still has good moments, like with this weekend’s Succession finale. And I imagine the next time a huge news event takes place, people will still flock there for real-time updates. But it’s no longer a place to chill because boring places aren’t fun places. True, there remains no better site to get dump people’s dumb opinions. True, Twitter remains the best site get yelled at by strangers. All of that is great. But the funny and smart voices have mostly decamped for bluer skies.

Yes, I’ve gotten a code for Bluesky. So far it feels a little like a new housing development in a cornfield. The model home is cool and all, but it’s still pretty empty. Maybe a bunch of families with ping-pong tables and Slip-n-Slides will move in, but I’m not overly optimistic.

It’s also worth considering the possibility that people have finally wised up about social media altogether. Maybe they’ve realized that the time suck isn’t worth it, that whatever we’re getting from these sites is costing us too much in return. If I had any sense, I would hang up my digital presence altogether, but like so many of you, I’m addicted. I like the engagement and the jokes and the dopamine hit of a well-received tweet. I even like fighting sometimes. Although I hate being wrong, I’m grateful for when my own wrongness led me to reevaluate my own dumb opinions. I’m grateful for the lessons in humility I’ve been taught when I found myself apologizing for a boneheaded comment or thread. I’m glad I met so many cool people on Twitter without actually having to, you know, meet them.

Anyway, I’m not leaving Twitter but it no longer feels like a necessary stop during my daily rounds As it gets hollowed out, I find less and less reason to spend my time there. For the foreseeable future, it will remain my go-to for breaking news and big moments. I guess I’ll be treating it the way I treat CNN: a channel I turn on when I feel like there’s a reason but otherwise basically ignore. What sucks for me is that, with Twitter no longer holding my attention, I have to find something else for that. Hopefully that doesn’t mean self-reflection because, as bad as Twitter has become, that would be worse.

Alright, now I’m going to post this on Twitter.