For a while now I’ve been fantasising about leaving Twitter. Last night I finally did that. My reasons are varied and numerous. But the primary reason was probably the level of caustic exchanges and pointless conflict. The straw that broke the camels back was slightly ridiculous, but a theme I’d been frustrated by over the past few months. I often found myself replying to funny tweets with passing jokey comments. The kind of comment people wouldn’t think twice about in day to day life, the sort of mildly witty retorts that lubricate social situations.
I enjoyed trying to craft a witty response, trying to get a few laughs. I’d rarely use Twitter to make serious points. Purely because I no longer viewed Twitter as a place where serious thought was taking place. So, a Friday night after a few beers, I leave a passing remark, something along the lines of ‘try flossing’, in response to a tweet about someone having poor dental hygeine. I suddenly find myself arguing with ten different people as to why flossing would be beneficial to this person. A minor, passing comment is now an angry, toxic debate where I’m defending something that every dentist up and down the country would state as something obviously true.
Twitters Caustic Nature
I don’t like conflict particularly. I enjoy polite debate. But when I have ten people calling me various insults, and arguing with me over something that’s blatantly obivous. I wonder what I’m doing with my life. I’m in a pub beer garden, sat on my own trying to prove that flossing is good, whilst my partner and some of her family are inside relaxing and having a good time. I cast my mind back to the past several weeks, and I can think of several occassions where I replied to someone with a completely innocuous response, that wasn’t intended to be a serious point, and I’m suddenly at war with a swarm of contrarians.
I had been on Twitter since 2009, and I don’t recall Twitter being like this prior to Elon Musks takeover. Mostly, you’d get little to no response to similar tweets, maybe a ‘like’ or two and some replying ‘haha, yeah’. Since Musks takeover, everything seems ramped up to the extreme. It’s turned from a relatively quiet space of mostly friends interacting with one another, to a British town center on a Friday night, where coked up bald men seek to do battle with anyone willing.
Conspiracy Land
I’ve never been into conspiracy theories, bar watching a couple of Alex Jones documentaries when I was 17. Normally the whole point in wild conspiracy theories is that they exist in fringes, you have to go out of your way to seek them out. They’re spoken in cautious whispers, for fear of attracting the wrong kind of attention. Conspiracy theory folks used to be slightly paranoid and exchanged their latest theories in hushed voices. After Musks takeover, suddenly these people were the charismatic frontmen, commanding the crowd. Many more Tweets started with ”🤔 Isn’t it strange that… insert absolutely wild statement“.
I would open my Twitter account to see a never-ending stream of flat-earthers, people terrified of plane exhaust trails (not in a sensible climate concern kind of way…), or even more specific geo-political concerns, such as maybe Bashar al-Assad is actually the good guy in all this.
Most of the conspiracy nonsense seemed to eminate from a select few accounts, they were the epicenter, a Danish woman (supposedly a doctor), a guy living in Malaysia, who seems to have an opinion on everything happening in the west, despite living the other side of the world and having nothing to do with the west. A Cambodian guy larping as an Italian fascist. Just to name a few. Blocking most of these accounts made the situation slightly better, but you could never quite block enough of their minions.
Nazis
Ten years ago, someone saying something with even a whiff of racism would be rightly targeted, and usually an hour later their account would be banished. And I’m talking about semi-covert racism, suggestive, dog whistle level stuff. Not blatant and brazen use of slurs, or people admiring Adolph Hitler. But that’s where we’re at today. I would regularly see accounts whose sole aim was seemingly to vindicate the Führer. Even well-known influencers such as Candace Owens openly discussing how, maybe he was just a little misunderstood.
I’d occassionally report accounts who were spouting blatant racism, in almost all cases, I’d recieve an email from Twitter saying “we’ve had a look, and we can’t see what was wrong with their tweets, thanks though”. And the tweets in question would be openly calling for genocide. Using the N word, that level stuff.
It got to the point where I didn’t bother reporting anything anymore, I just started blocking accounts liberally.
Self-hating Westerners
The next crowd often have ties to the Nazis and the conspiracy nuts. These people, their ring-leader being people like Jackson Hinkle, seem to take every single opposing position or view as their own governments. If the UK comes up with a policy on conserving the Newt population, they’ll start coming up with reasons why Newts actually should be killed. If the U.S. government launches a policy on recycling batteries, they’ll start pushing a narrative that batteries should just be discarded in a large pile somewhere. In other words, they’ll push a maligned counter-narrative on absolutely everything their own culture or government adopts. Paper straws? Nope, we actually need straws made of lead. Our government is just trying to ruin our mega gulps by introducing brain altering paper particles.
These people are especially active when it comes to foreign policy. Western Governments side with Ukraine and Taiwan. They will aggressively side with Russia and the CCP. I’m not sure to what extent this is genuine interference and bot farms by the Russian government and the CCP. But key-figures who don’t, at least on the surface, appear to have any links with these entities play the role of leader of the useful idiots. The contrarians lap it up and propagate what’s likely Kremlin backed propaganda. In other words, they’ll fall for propaganda pushed by governments that aren’t even their own. It’s one thing to imbibe the propaganda of the country you’re living in. But to fall for propaganda from a state you’ve never even set foot in, is truly something.
This became most unbearable in the days after Russia bombed a childrens cancer hospital. Seeing thousands of people living thousands of miles away from the war in Ukraine, discussing, with a straight face how it was actually an American bomb, dropped by the AFU, on their own capital… Twitter became a truly unbearable place during that time.
Graphic Violence
This is perhaps the most damaging and severe aspect, in terms of mental health, I noticed. Several years ago, if a gory video came up in my feed, someone accidentally erecting a metal ladder against a powerline, just one recent example. I would be shaken to the core. I would think about it for weeks. I’d wonder if maybe somehow they survived, what their life would be like if they did. How many grieving family members were left behind. Did they feel any pain or fear in their final moments? In essense, we should never really in our lives be exposed to witnessing such horrendous things. Twitter this past year has been so awash with horrible and graphically violent videos, that that same video now would stir virtually nothing inside of me. Maybe a tut and an eye-roll ‘that was stupid’. Anyway…
I don’t fully understand the ramifications of becoming so desensitised to seeing clips like that… but I can’t imagine it’s good.
My Impulsive Nature
Whilst I tried to use Twitter for light-hearted entertainment, my impulsive ADHD brain couldn’t help itself at times. I’d see Tweets that were so outrageously stupid or disturbing, that I’d almost feel a duty to counter it. Surely, I can’t just let that slide? My impulsive mind would race to come up with the most damning retort I could muster. Not stopping to think that these people likely knew what they were saying was completely absurd.
Their job is to simply create noise, to create outrage. If I stopped to think about it for a minute or two, I’d understand that and simply ignore it. But my impulsive nature would mean I’d wade right in with righteous fury. Often later feeling stupid, realising I was likely arguing with a Python script, running in the basement of some shady government building in St Petersburg.
I could also feel my own behaviour starting to be modified. I felt myself saying more outrageous things, simply because that was the new nature of the game. You had to, to be heard now. Previous Twitter, you weren’t really rewarded for being edgy or deranged, but on X, that was almost the aim of the game. The more outrageous the Tweet, the more interactions, the more likes and retweets. Talk about something funny you saw earlier, talk about your day, make a jokey comment, you’re either met with tumbleweed or derision. When I jokingly compared Just Stop Oil to ISIS, a tweet I felt slightly ashamed of the next day, thousands of likes and retweets rolled in. That’s what you’re rewarded for on Twitter now.
The Lure of Monetisation
I resisted the urge to pay for Twitter, I laughed at people paying for it for a time. I’m ashamed to admit that I eventually caved, aforementioned impulsivity and fat fingers meant often having to delete Tweets and start again. Also, as you can probably tell from the length of this post, I’m not great at being succinct. So being able to Tweet beyond the usual however many characters, and being able to edit tweets felt enticing. So, reluctantly, I paid the £9 for Twitter premium. Partly for those reasons, but also partly out of curiousity.
What I then noticed was a sudden uptick in likes and interactions. I wasn’t aware at the time that those who paid for Twitter, had their responses bumped up to the top of the replies. Until someone mocked me for my Just Stop Oil/ISIS Tweet, accusing me of paying to have such a stupid Tweet boosted to the top of the replies (a fair criticism, honestly). When I understood how this feature worked, I realised that basically anyone not paying for Twitter, was essentially now just screaming into the void. Don’t pay for the blue tick, and you’re simply drowned out, not a part of the conversation for the most part. This seemed so counter to the original point in Twitter, where everyone has an equal voice. I realised that Twitter was now unrecognisable from the Twitter I signed up for back in 2009.
After using Twitter Premium for a few weeks, I noticed the ‘monetisation’ tab. I needed 5m interactions in three months, and I could potentially be paid a share of the ad-revenue. The idea that I could be paid for trying to come up with witty tweets and getting a few likes seemed appealing. I suspect this influenced my behaviour for a period of time. I’d find myself trying to ‘get in early’ with a witty attempt of a Tweet, especially to large accounts, where, if my Tweet landed, I’d get a bunch of impressions.
That’s when I understood another phenomena I’d noticed. The ‘OK’ repliers. Most of the responses on Twitter now are just people saying pointless things such as ‘OK’, or ‘Hello!’ from blue tick accounts. You have to scroll for quite some time before you get to the actual opinions or thoughts. Essentially, people are now mass spamming absolute nothingness replies on large accounts just to harvest the interaction numbers. These people made me furious, until I realised, I wasn’t much better and was partly being influenced by the same lure of monetisation myself. In other words, I was being duped into adding more noise to the platform as well. Okay, I was trying to be thoughtful in my responses. But it wasn’t much better.
Following vs For You
People would often point out, ‘why don’t you just use the ‘following’ tab?‘. The following tab, for those who don’t know, is just the tweets from people you follow, and not the deranged algorithms suggestion. The For You tab would suggest more of what you interacted with, not based on how that interaction was in terms of positive vs negative. So if you called an anti-vaxxer a clown, you’d be recommended ten times more anti-vaxxer nonsense, purely because you interacted with it.
The problem with the ‘Following’ tab was two-fold for me. Given my account was nearly fifteen years old, many of the accounts I followed from years ago, had either gone completely potty themselves in some way, had been hacked and taken over by porn bots, or were inactive. One thing I enjoyed about Twitter was discovering new voices, and it used to largely be a positive experience. I’d be recommended Tweets by people posting about things I cared about, not things that were designed to drive me to the edge of sanity. That used to be the best thing about Twitter for me.
Rest in peace Twitter, I interacted with many great people on there. I’ll miss the people I talked about Derby County with regularly on there, and I’ll miss the Golang community on there. Hopefully I can find new communities elsewhere. But I can’t see myself returning to Twitter any time soon.
Summary
This is becoming a fairly comprehensive list at this point. So to summarise so far. I could no longer stomach the sheer amount of open bigotry and dangerous ideas. They seemed to now make up the largest share of voices on the platform. I could feel myself being driven slightly insane by it. I felt rage, fear, anxiety and a sense of doom opening Twitter. I began to think that these views were now mainstream, that the woman behind the deli counter in Morrissons could be an anti-vaxxer that believes cured meats could cure autism, that the mechanic at Halfords might have his own pet conspiracy about how cars don’t really need breaks. In a sense, I felt as though the world was actually full of these people, they were everywhere.
I had to remind myself that, Twitter was no longer a reflection of the general public. The sensible minded folks left Twitter in droves after the takeover, rightly predicting what was to come. The people left were people like me who used Twitter for specific communities, or people clinging on to hope that it might get more bearable again some day, and, of course the hordes of orcs and trolls, now enjoying their golden era in the spotlight.
Whilst it was yet another jokey comment turned angry debate that finally drove me off the platform, it was all of the above that made it an easy decision in the end.
What I Learnt
This past year on Twitter, has made me realise just how susceptible people are to algorithms, myself included. Previously mild-mannered social commentators were now behaving like steroid adled sociopaths, likely hooked on the outrage money they were generating. Others were spending hours each day spamming replies in the desperate hopes of getting a few quid, likely people in very poor parts of the world. All the while, most of us were being driven into a wild rage being force-fed an increasingly large stream of Tweets almost perfectly designed to fill them with rage. Each interaction, good or bad, brings another thousand more of those Tweets waiting in the wings.
It’s taken me a long-time to really put my finger on understanding these problems. Realising I’d become hooked on something so fundamentally negative in almost every sense. I’d considered coming off the platform several months ago, but imagined I could simply block a bunch of accounts and make it more liveable. This wasn’t the case, there’s just too many accounts, and too many incentives for its steady decline.
I’m already having some withdrawal symptoms. Thinking about the few people I interacted (positively) with regularly, I feel somewhat disconnected from the world, like I’m missing the latest information. But I think I’ll quickly adjust. I felt a sense of peace this morning, waking up and not having to anxiously check Twitter. Starting my day texting friends and reading a few articles instead of doom scrolling, or backlash management has been honestly worth it already.
I suspect I’ll write a follow-up post at some point, after a few weeks clean. So I can reflect on what life’s been like free of Twitter addiction, and how I’ve adjusted.