I deleted Twitter on Saturday.
I sat there on the kitchen table and clicked ‘Permanently Delete My Account‘.
It was a weird feeling especially since I’ve been on it since 2007. After the archived tweets arrived in my inbox, it was time to delete Twitter once and for all.
Under the Tweets section or the archive, I have over 84,500 tweets recorded. I spent a bit of time going through the early years and seeing what I shared. I’ve shared so much over the years.
Some amusing, some educational, some shit. ?
Most of all, I shared my creative ideas too easily, too openly unfortunately.
Included in the archive file, I also received my photos and videos as separate files. They were the most amusing for me and reminded me of all the creations I made.
I’m glad they aren’t all lost.
I backed the archive into the cloud as well as my own iMac desktop so now, my entire Twitter work in my own hands.
Then, I clicked DELETE.
It was instant. Gone!
A returned message said that I have 30 days to change my mind. If, anytime during the 30 days, I re-enter Twitter, it all comes back. They make it difficult to delete your accounts because now I have to fight my own will power.
Changing Behaviours
Yesterday, I accidentally clicked into Twitter from my work desktop because it was a habit and I saw that it took me to the Twitter front page – not my account. I made a mental note that this habit must be stopped. Another thing I noticed is that on Saturday night while out waiting for my husband to order some food before a movie, I didn’t take my phone out of my bag.
What for?
I had no messages to check, nothing to send. I had no notifications nor did I take a photo or share that I was going to the movies. I sat there looking at other people looking at their phones. It feels weird not to have to narrate your life openly anymore but I look forward to the challenge.
I will need to find a way to share my curations (do I really need to share them?) that I come across in some way that is easy for me. For example, I love to read blogs and articles on Feedly. In the past, I’d share these through Twitter but now, I have to reconsider how to capture these in some way that makes sense for me and that I can collate my own thoughts and value around them. For now, I have created a Feedly Board “Helen’s Finds” and I may add this as a widget to my blog here. Alternatively, I’ll just create a new WordPress post and copy and paste the links in that. Of course, I know that I could be streamlining this process by using automations but part of me WANTS to make things a little difficult for myself because it will mean that I have to think long and hard about that piece of information: is it really necessary? Or, am I adding to the noise? How will it change or impact me?
It means that my curated finds now have an extra layer of thinking about them.
So getting off social media permanently means new ways of discovering how to do things all over again. How to capture articles and references, how to share them in ways that you still build a reputation around it WITHOUT the need for building a following or sharing through the social media platforms. It requires some lateral thinking. I’m up for the challenge. After all, I’ll have heaps of time now. ?
You know what’s going to be worse though?
What To Expect?
People telling me that I’m a luddite.
Or worse, looking at me sadly as if I’m the one who’s behind the times. Or a conspiracy theorist, a hippy or old fashioned.
Maybe they think I’m trying to escape someone or a situation, or to hide something like an illness, a divorce, a liaison, a stalker which is the reason I’m off social media?
Nope. None of that.
Nothing has happened in my life to set me down this path. Instead, it’s been brewing for a long while. My mind finally reached a point where I had to switch – and commit to a new change. Like an addict that reaches the cross roads to make a decision: make or break.
A transformation. A complete cutting of the past – getting rid of it all – getting rid of my thinking and coming up with new ways of thinking from now on.
I’m not a luddite.
I love technology and how it helps us in our lives. Also what was great to be part of in the early years of social media, isn’t anymore. It’s not social, it’s nasty and toxic. Not always of course, but it does change your own behaviour when you’re on it and I don’t want to be part of it anymore.
What I resented for a long time now is how technology is being used to replace the human-to-human connections and conversations. I need to feel connected in some way to some higher purpose and outcomes that go beyond just getting Likes, Follows and Replies to stuff I share on Twitter.
Social media is now making forcing us to anonymise ourselves or close ourselves off from others to keep our sanity from the spammers, bots, trolls, or just the lurkers who watch and don’t engage (who could be your peers, friends and enemies) to use something you share against you.
But I don’t want to have conversations with anonymous people; with avatars or bots.
This technological, hands off, anonymised, streamlined, optimised, ‘fit all’ approach is used now being as a default first over a human, empathetic conversation or approach – and I’m saying, enough. So I’m going to stick to my guns.
After all, if others have done it and survived quite well without social media – AND they have reverted to more traditional approaches to share their intellectual property out to the world in some way that (books, conferences, meetups, etc) that others value, then social media is irrelevant in my world now.
Hiya, Helen,
My goodness! It looks like we have both gone through a very similar process of questioning Twitter, although I haven’t been brave enough myself, just yet, to delete my Twitter ID, which I also started in early 2007. I *still* find a good use for it as I have described at ?? http://www.elsua.net/2022/06/13/twitter-is-where-my-conversations-went-to-die/
Eventually, I have decided I will wait to see if the things I miss the most out of Twitter itself would eventually come back as I am describing at ?? http://www.elsua.net/2022/06/15/things-i-terribly-miss-in-twitter. If not, I suspect I will be following your same steps as you have described above …
We shall see what happens, eventually, but one thing for sure is that I can’t think of another social tool that’s just as powerful and enriching in building one’s PLN than Twitter has ever been. Hard to leave that behind, at least, for me. I will wait some more, perhaps it can revert its due course soonish … ???
Omg Luis. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. YOUR POSTS RESONATED WITH ME SO MUCH. (I’m shouting because you’ve exactly shared why I decided to pull the pin). Thank you. Please please please continue to remain connected with me and I with you through your blog too – these are the feelings, actions and behaviours the world needs right now. ?
Hi, Helen,
Whoaaah! Thanks very much for that wonderful follow-up feedback and very kind comments! I very much appreciate them ???
I wasn’t really sure whether the blog comment got through, but glad it did. I am certainly looking forward to keeping in touch with you via our blogs. In fact, I have got a couple of blog drafts I am working on about posts you have shared yourself over here about how you’re making sense of all of these digital / media tools that I can also relate to quite a bit! So I am very much looking forward to keeping up with the conversations…
The RSS newsfeed of your blog has been on my feed reader for a good few years already as an essential ready, and have been following you for a good few years now, so look forward to further interactions and conversations. Gosh, it feels like the early 00s once again! ????? heh
Hello again Luis, I have no idea why I didn’t have your blog in my Feedly reader. It’s in there now. Also, I do a post on various things I find over the week that make me think called “Curated TidBits” and I even added both your articles to that too because I’d like to refer back to them. I am going to send them to people I know too who are thinking of doing the same. They just explain the ‘why’ so well, so thank you once again.
You are most welcome, Helen! I very much appreciate the heads-up as well on the “Curated Tidbits” initiative. I am thinking of doing something similar to that extent. Perhaps along the lines of what Harold Jarche does with the Friday Finds ?? https://jarche.com/category/fridays-finds/
I have a private Slack space where I have curated over 100k Web clippings, annotations, tweets or LI posts, but that’s just available to me. I used to rely on both Twitter and LI to share some of those, but I guess it’s a good opportunity to follow both your & Harold’s lead and perhaps use the blog as well for those curated links to add further up into the conversations … Thinking also about doing a combination of what Euan Semple does with sharing shorter, more to the point, blog posts for additional insights worth considering on a particular set of topics.
Should be quite an interesting play, I figure! Thanks a bunch for the inspiration and for the heads-up! ???
Thanks again Luis, I wasn’t aware you could use a private Slack space as a repository for web clippings. That’s a new one for me. Don’t follow my lead (ha ha!). I use Evernote to capture notes and posts and links and all that – and it’s my note taking space but more and more I’m finding the app I use the most on my phone is the Jetpack App which is linked to this website so I just put clippings directly into draft posts. Not the best way but there are some that I want to keep and share however, mostly I use Evernote.
Wow, congrats, … I think. Not quite there myself yet, I must say, although my actuall interacting with Twitter is extremely limited (and mostly was). When I do post to Twitter it is from my own blog (and responses come back to my blog), so when something creates a conversation, I can have that conversation in my own WordPress blog. Not needing to step into the Twitter interface helps I think. I definitely see deleting my Twitter account(s) as something likely to occur in the near future (same for LinkedIn actually).
Hi Ton, that’s great. I wasn’t aware you could do this. Do you have a post about how you got the Tweets to come back to your blog. This is what I never figured out as people usually never wrote any comments here. At one stage I even closed down the comments section here as no one used it. However I opened it up again because I was always returning to Twitter. I think that was partly to blame where a tool (beyond your control pulls you back into where people are!).
LinkedIn now, strangely, seems to be my only “medium” I’m keeping static and open until this too will be deleted when I retire in a couple of years. I unfollowed everyone on it there (so I have a clean feed) but now I’ll just never share, reply or comment on anything. Let’s see how that goes.
Facebook and Instagram taking extraordinarily long time to get my data archive so waiting for those and once I get them, they’ll be easier to delete.
It takes 2 plugins for WordPress.org, Webmention and Bridgy, plus some tweaks to your theme. Webmention is a type of pingback/trackback. Bridgy posts to Twitter for you and watches Twitter for responses for which it then sends webmentions to your site which you can display underneath your posts. Not entirely as simple as the above, and not always perfect, but that’s the basic set-up.
Ah!! Well it’s too late now but I would have done this if I knew about it sooner. ? Doh! I should have investigated. This would have ensured a way to cut the noise out!