June 2022
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.
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