... or whatever you want to call it. What the hell is X?
Anyways, as of now I'm no longer using Twitter. (Actively, I mean. I may still log in just to post the occasional thing or two about Twitter. Including this post.)
I joined Twitter some time in April 2015, when it looked like this:
Twitter in April 2015 (2 minutes after I made my account, according to my Twitter archive.) Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20150404180550/https://twitter.com/
Back when there were actual people having conversations on it, and not just bots replying to bots. Back when you could use whatever you wanted to post a tweet, and not just the official app which is full of ads and algorithm bullshit. Back when Twitter was what it was meant to be: a place where "The people, topics and conversations you care about' were contained.
I used to like Twitter. Honestly, I still somewhat do, It's just that a lot of the time people spend on there is complaining about things that don't need to be complained about. Or engaging with a troll that obviously doesn't care and would never consider your opinion, and just wants to see you mad.
It was probably like this back in 2015, too, but I don't exactly remember how it was back then.
What I can remember, though, is the exact date this got way worse.
If you aren't able to click on the link, December 12, 2022 is when Twitter introduced the option to pay for a verification badge. It's also the date they boosted every Twitter Blue user to the top of posts' reply sections.
If you don't like Elon, you can probably see why this is a bad idea.
If you can't, here's why it's a bad idea:
- People who don't know about the change can get tricked into thinking an impersonator is the real deal because of the verification checkmark.
- You can pay money to have your replies at the top of anyone's comment section, meaning they can just say whatever they want and unless it's hidden then most people will see it.
In the span of a day, Twitter turned a badge that tells a person that they're real into a badge of shame. Which in turn made the reply section of any remotely popular post unusable unless you either manually block all of them or you find a way to do it automatically.
Now, let's fast forward a year or so.
Over time I gradually noticed that if I wanted to follow someone and they had Twitter and some other social media I also had, I would choose that other social media most of the time. Over time, this turned into me following about 16 people on Twitter as of last week (around March 15-17th).
Then, I really started unfollowing people. On the 19th, I was down to 4 people I had followed. 3 of them used Twitter as their main form of social media, and 1 used both Twitter and Tumblr.
So I remade my Tumblr account. (Note: This isn't specifically because of them, this is because a lot of people I wanted to follow also actively posted on Tumblr, which I didn't have at the time.)
That's when I realized I could just leave Twitter and not lose that much.
So 3 days later, I logged out of my Twitter account.
I'll keep the account up for archival purposes, (I would do archive.org but twitter clearly doesn't want you to view profiles when you're logged out) but other than that, I'll be completely off Twitter after I publish this blog post.
Now, where can you find me?
All of the social media I use are linked in the Socials tab of my website, but if you just want to view this post and leave, here's the 3 I'm most active on:
I'll see you there. Goodbye, Twitter.
