delete your twitter

 

Maybe it's my fault, who I follow, what they're into, etc., but wow! I write this having fallen back into the social media hole I was almost out of in July, having realized how awful it was for me. I have resolved (for the probably 100th time, ask any of my friends) to leave twitter. For these reasons:

1. It stifles my creativity. My I am more creative when I have time to be bored. Twitter demands your constant attention and sucks the idle thoughts right out of you.

2. Many of the things I want to tweet would be better blog posts. I almost made a tweet about this very concept. If I tweet my thoughts, I'll condense them, effectively removing relevant nuance and explanation.

3. Lots of things I truly, truly don't need to know about. For example, those girls in Mahomet who got busted for blackface this summer. Is it despicable? Yes! Did I need to know about it? No!!

4. The constant repetition of negative things, that I'm mostly already aware of. My most recent Twitter scroll consisted of several tweets about nostalgia for the pre-covid times, about disordered eating, depression, how much Joe Biden sucks, how much Donald Trump sucks, Covid vaccines and why you should and should also not get them, how stupid everyone but me is, how you're not worth anything if you aren't reading theory and agitating for the revolution 24/7. Again, this is a function of my social scene, but it's fucking exhausting. To quote John Mulaney, "I just wanna sit on this bench and feed my birds."

So that's what I'm going to try to do. Sit on my floor and read poetry. Go on Instagram instead. Take ballet classes. Walk through the neighborhood holding someone's hand. Pick babies out of sunflower patches.

I can't truly fully completely delete twitter from my life, if only because that's how I share these blog posts (because not very many people who read them subscribe or follow-- guys!! Do those things please, and/or share this blog with people. I'm not looking to become internet famous but would absolutely love a little more interaction so this feels less void-shouty or personal-journaly. 

My apologies for the shorter post, it's almost 3am and I have about 8 more pages of medieval French poetry* to get through before I let myself go to bed. Here's my challenge: think about how Twitter makes you feel, act, and think. Think about it really hard. If you're anything like me, it'll freak you out and make you want to leave forever (and join me here in the blogosphere <3)

I'll never be as cool as Mars Argo, but here she is in all her classic glory doing this far before I do.

*Le lai de Lanval goes OFF by the way. Totally slaps.