Note: I work 7 days a week now, and my life is pretty much better and greater than it ever has been. So I have very little time for this now, but I feel a need to say something.
I left Twitter for Bluesky about 3 days ago.
And I’m not coming back.
No thanks.
When it comes to Twitter, there’s no easy way to parse it. You can only really speak of it truthfully by adhering strictly to definitions of what it was not. But of course, there are exceptions and expectations to list, and maintain.
Forthright it must be noted that, as of the time of this writing, Twitter is… alive. But one must question what sort of ‘life’ it really leads. One must question if websites like MySpace are ‘alive’, in comparison to their former glory.
Twitter is worse, though. With MySpace, the lights are on, but nobody seems to be home. One must necessarily wonder, who’s paying the hosting bill?. With Twitter, the lights are on, but the site itself is a fucked-out windsock. It may still ‘breathe’, but the light clearly left its eyes, some time ago.
And that’s okay. Clearly, it’s not, but— in a world where people set children on fire and nobody does anything, the boundaries of ‘okay’ are not clearly defined. Twitter’s ‘demise’ is, essentially, unimportant. What I had for lunch today was more important. What you had for lunch is, too. Essentially, Twitter was never ‘essential’.
It was great to get news before it actually broke— in my family, I was known as the ‘Computer Guy’, who could get the latest news before it even hit the airwaves. I’d beat mainstream news by 2-3 days. And I’d do that, because Twitter was mostly bullshit and I just told them unfiltered everything, and when I was right, they only remembered those parts. They love me, so they gave me leeway that newspapers would not be given by strangers.
Clearly, Twitter is not important, in the grand scheme of individual lives. There was a potential for it to be something more, but I think we all know why that never occurred. I think we all know who smothered it in its crib, so to speak, after a certain ‘Spring’ got a bit too spring-y.
And it wasn’t exactly important to me.
But I feel a sense of loss. And it’s similar to the feeling of loss when you come to terms with any other unimportant, yet emotional loss. There’s a sentimentality here that, in my mind, demands to be addressed. And that sentimentality spakes thusly:
It feels like when you’re processing the end of a beloved television show, only the show is still on the fucking air. Like Stargate SG-1 after the Goa’uld were defeated; or, perhaps, the Simpsons, trudging along, becoming exactly what they mocked during their best and greatest of all years.
But, in the end, shedding a tear for the Simpsons’ meteoric fall in quality— past season 8, most reckon— seems silly.
And so does shedding even a tear for Twitter.
Yes, I wanted a lot of things. And yes, I will discuss them.
But I’m a normal person right now.
I work 7 days a week.
Twitter could fucking fold and, as George Carlin once said, my blood pressure wouldn’t even change.
I have all of my friends on Bluesky. I have all of their Discord information. And, essentially, even if Bluesky did not exist, I know that I would find them.
With that in mind, I cannot be hurt.
Who gives a shit about Twitter?
Goodbye.