I’ve always been a fan of Twitter. Despite all of its problems — of which there are many — the site’s format resonated with me in a way that no other social media platform had. When everyone was going crazy for Instagram and Snapchat, I was a child arguing with other children on video game forums. I always felt like I could be much more expressive in text than in photo. I don’t even take photos that often.
Even with the character limit, it felt like you could have generally meaningful interactions with other people on Twitter. Maybe not if you deployed yourself to the trenches to the replies of popular tweets, sure, but that kind of goes without saying on the internet. There was absolutely a certain breed of aggression on the platform that was always a little omnipresent, but it was a manageable tradeoff in exchange for all the other good stuff.
Unfortunately, Twitter has taken a violent turn since the pandemic. Algorithmically driven content has been pushed with increasing force in an effort to drive engagement, and driving engagement means that most of the content it recommends are posts designed to make you angry. Even if you enter the cesspool of replies to stand your ground, half of them are probably made by bots. And now, not only can you pay to have your replies boosted to the top, you can get paid back to make them, which makes this whole situation about 50 billion times worse.
Twitter has always had a problem with toxicity, but the platform has felt exponentially worse in this regard in recent years. At some point I realized that almost all of my interactions with the website were just making me irritated. So I’ve decided that I’m done with it. There’s no sense in using something that only serves to give me grief.
I’ve been checking out Bluesky and it seems better. It’s a much smaller website but given the problems Twitter has had in recent years I don’t know if that’s entirely a bad thing. The nice part is that algorithms are completely optional and you can turn them off fully, or customize them to your heart’s desire.
But honestly, I think I’ve grown rather tired of this form of social media anyways. There are so many other ways to have interactions with people that feel so much more meaningful, even while staying on the internet. I have gained so much more by engaging with others in actual conversation than any zinger I’ve fired off into the void in 140 (280?) characters or less.
Plus, there shouldn’t be any incentives to talk about something online. No numbers, no fame, and certainly no money for god’s sake. You should talk about something because you want to talk about it. Algorithms be damned.