The Little Blue Bird has Flown

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

I am one of those people who has decided to leave Twitter.

The “final straw” was Elon Musk following through on his threat to purchase it. But I’d been considering the move for some time.

I was recognizing the signs of digital addiction — the oft-described state of urgency for another adrenaline hit, another warm fuzzy from a stranger’s “like”, another joke shared with a false community built around shared interests. I was logging onto my echo chamber way too often.

Now I’m not a public person, and I tended to shy away from posting controversial or politically charged comments. As a result, I managed to avoid the worst of the trolling, misogyny, hate and racism that so many have enjoyed on the platform.

But I was scrolling more, and enjoying less. Being a bystander to others’ “debates”, particularly when they quickly deteriorated into name-calling, had a diminishing appeal. Even the parody accounts that I love couldn’t make up for the emptiness of earnest people preaching to the choir while being ignored by those they sought to convince of the facts.

And facts? Forget it. Twitter isn’t about facts. It’s about shouting the loudest.