A Quiet Sunday

This past week I seriously considered quitting Twitter.

I know what this sounds like. For years, I’ve been one of the people poking fun at others who said they were going to quit Twitter and then either never do, or do and quickly come back. But truth be told, this has been a gathering storm inside of me for a while now.¹ It hasn’t been any incident, it just feels like Twitter is getting worse over time and the line between what I get out of it versus what I lose in terms of time, in terms of life, is blurring.

To be clear, this is my own experience. And it’s one I make for myself by way of whom I follow. This actually has nothing to do with Donald Trump — well, tangentially; more on that in a second — I’m firmly in the camp that believes his banishment both was Twitter’s right and was the right thing to do. It simply has to do with how I feel when using Twitter.

Anyway, this is a grandiose build up for a meek payoff. I’m not going to quit Twitter. But I am trying something new in an attempt to take my timeline back into my own hands as we start 2021.

No, I’m not unfollowing everyone. I know for many people this makes sense. Especially for those of us who have been on the service for coming upon 15 years now. Those we followed over a decade ago probably should be revisited. But actually, I’m quite proud of the curation work I’ve done over the years.² And I also know the bullshit baggage that comes with unfollowing people.³ So I’m relying on Twitter’s actual most powerful tools: Mute and Lists.

I’d like to think that Twitter has not gotten worse post-Trump because again, I’m happy Trump is gone, both from Twitter and especially from the Presidency. But if I’m being honest, I do think his removal has created a vacuum that is quickly being filled by other types of bullshit.

Said another way: Trump may have been a flytrap for people who might otherwise say stupid things about any number of topics to instead focus on Trump. Or his presence on Twitter for years may have drawn in people who say stupid things and who are now looking for other stupid things to talk about. Either way, with his removal, people seem to be acting out more to say stupid things or just generally spew out verbal diarrhea because they’re now bored.⁴ Or whatever. Again, my own opinion is just that Twitter — my timeline — has gotten worse, not better.

And I think I have a better solution, at least short-term, than ‘Unfollow’, partially because of how in-your-face that move is, but more so because ‘Mute’ is actually far more powerful. I can remain following all these people that I just don’t care to see or hear from anymore,⁵ but actually I won’t see what they have to say. Unless, of course, I want to in some very specific ways.

Taking this a step further, rather than just muting folks, I’m also adding them to my own “Muted” private Twitter list, where I can turn if I wish to see what I’m “missing”. Everyone loves a good hate follow, this list is that on steroids. If I’m ever bored or just feeling a bit masochistic, I can easily load up this list and let it punch me in the face over and over again.

I honestly love this. I know it sounds silly. Perhaps childish. Again, just unfollow these people, right? But it’s so passive-aggressively empowering to do it this way. I don’t have to make a “life or death” call, to blow up years of curated follows, I can just put these people in their own little holding pen. My new favorite thing right now is to scroll through Twitter and find a new person to add to my Muted list. It feels like I’m vaccinating my timeline.

A few days in, it’s working wonders. What I really care about using Twitter for is real-time information flow. If someone/something is a good source for that, that’s a good follow. Secondarily, there are people who have good commentary/insight on information. Lastly, there are countless other people who are just entertaining. Many people I follow started in one of these three camps and are now the aforementioned Twitter sewage. Again, we all get it. It’s easy to fall into this. I’m sure some people would even put myself in such a bucket. And that’s great! Feel free to mute me. I highly recommend it.

If 2020 taught me anything, it’s that some people are really awful at using Twitter.⁶ And while I held out hope that 2021, post-Trump, might have been better — and while there was an initial burst of joyous Twitter — I think the opposite has actually happened as a massive void has been left to fill.

So I’m going to try this new, quieter version of Twitter for a while and see how it works. And if it turns out that those muted users in list purgatory do not spark joy then, well… Hopefully others get something positive out of this idea as well.

¹ And while I’m not quitting now or any time soon, I do think I’ve firmly added to my life goals the ability to quit Twitter. Email remains first and foremost in this aspiration, but I think at the very least only using Twitter as a real time news source and perhaps as a broadcast channel is a worthy goal. One day…

² Also, while for years I had an entirely arbitrary rule of only following 999 people max, in the past couple of years I’ve sailed past that and have found most of those new follows to be great additions (versus some of the legacy follows), certainly in terms of broadening my perspectives.

³ Even if it doesn’t lead directly to the “why did you unfollow me?” question/confrontation, it’s well known that many people both follow such things and care about such things. This is a flaw in the system in some way, but it’s also the natural side effect of the follow system itself, which is, of course, the core power of Twitter. I do think ‘mute’ is a nice work-around. It’s quietly slipping out of the back door. It’s ghosting.

⁴ I want to recognize that the pandemic/lockdowns likely play a large part here as well. Some people — people I actually know — often seem to be losing their minds on Twitter. Some of it may be that they’re losing their minds in real life, but I think a bigger factor is the temptation of Twitter to say something that gets a reaction. In normal times, when we have normal lives, day-to-day gets in the way. In lockdown times, we load up Twitter…

⁵ Which reminds me, obviously Twitter should have a way to distinguish between those you follow and mute and those you don’t follow and mute. This is a real distinction! Ideally you could also see other layers like those that follow you and that you mute, but I’d settle for the former. These are all super interesting signals!

⁶ It’s honestly sort of amazing watching people showcase themselves as tone deaf beyond belief, or those that simply cannot help but put feet in mouths. In a perverse way, it’s another reason not to fully unfollow these people on Twitter; it’s a good signal for whom I want to avoid in real life too!