The other day, I had a silly observation run across my mind and my first reaction was to grab my phone to post that slice of life to Twitter. And then I remembered Twitter has become X, a cesspool of bigots and bots, vying for who can lose the final shreds of their humanity first. My next thought was, ‘Well, where does a mildly humorous observation of mine even go then?’ I didn’t have an answer.
I mostly stepped away from Twitter around 2017 or so but I got off almost all social media around 2020, when my family started. I should adjust that slightly: I just stopped posting on social media. I would still scroll through my feeds to gather news, entertainment, and the happenings of the world. You know, as one does. But I found my urge to post my own content had really slowed down. Of course I shared occasional updates on my growing family, but that was infrequent and not on Twitter.
I know this isn’t a revelation: Twitter was always for the short quips and quick shots, right? Even before they tossed us more characters to play with. By its own intentional platform limitations, Twitter purposefully placed itself in that niche. I can’t remember the first time I heard it referred to as “micro blogging” but I heard it often enough to make the term lodge itself in my vocabulary. Longer format sharing was relegated to Facebook, blogs, Reddit, etc. Instagram, along with the short lived Vine, had the visual element of social media sharing locked down, even as Facebook competed in that world too. But short, (usually) text-based sharing? That was all Twitter. They quite literally invented it.
Even before Musk bought the platform and turned it into his Bigot Bonanza, the landscape was not exactly free of disgusting and vile actors. That’s part of the justification I gave myself on why I didn’t want to stick around longer than I did. Another part of it was a growing anxiety that whatever I posted was not going to be good enough to generate retweets and likes. That personal awakening is better left for another essay, as I am trying to keep this one light. Winky Face Emoji. Regardless of the reasons, the result was I did not post much on Twitter after 2017ish. Any silly little observations, genuine micro revelations, or short strong opinions I may have thought about never got shared in the same way as I had for almost a decade of social media use.
Some of those 240 character, gold nuggets made their way into other writing of mine, like stand up bits or longer creative writing projects. But most were simply observed by my brain, shared with anyone who might have been with earshot, and then drifted away to dissolve into whatever ethereal plane those types of thoughts call home.
And I was OK with that.
I was.
Mostly.
But right now, what even prompted this essay, is that I am now actively trying to use social media more. To (re)build a creative existence in the mediums I want, a social media presence is more a necessity than an optional element. So I’m stepping back into those old familiar social media sneakers, dusting them off with a feather duster made of wit and cynicism, and lacing them up with sarcasm. But something has changed. Obviously, as things do, march of time, etc. And now I don’t know where to put the musings I would have previously put on Twitter.
I know I’m not going on to X, basically the social media equivalent of what would happen if you put the Klan, the Nazis, a healthy serving of proud ignorance, and an algorithm that rewards hate in a blender, and then poured that putrid mixture into a martini glass you tossed into a flaming pile of garbage. So all my brilliant, cynical observations about the world are just going to have to be shared with myself and anyone that happens to be within earshot of my hilarious and/or poignant, 240 character quips.
Unless that’s what BlueSky is?
Yeah, bluesky. Lots of authors and creative folks there. Instagram has a lot of stamdups lately as well.