I quit Twitter several weeks ago. I finally had enough of the anger.
I joined the service in 2008 and since then I never figured out what to use it for. In the last several years I had my blog auto-tweet every new post. Hardly anybody clicked through.
Before you declare me virtuous, that lack of engagement was what made it easy to say goodbye. Facebook has just as much anger, but I’m still on it because it is easy to make it bring people here to read my posts. I wrote about how I do it here. It’s my number two referrer, after search.
I have signed up for a whole bunch of Facebook groups now, mostly about old roads, old cars, and old cameras. I did it because I like those things and can share my blog posts with those readers. But it’s had the surprising effect of diluting the anger in my feed. It’s all still there, but the posts from my groups space it out. One angry post is followed by a post about an abandoned road alignment, a ’72 Mercury Montego, a film photograph of someone’s beautiful girlfriend, and a discussion about Ilford HP5 Plus film.
Twitter had far higher anger density. I couldn’t figure out how to dilute it and one day, all of a sudden, I realized I’d had enough. It felt strange to delete my account after twelve years, but I find that I don’t miss Twitter at all. I thought I would, a little.
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