Twitter, I wish I knew how to quit you

It's like being in an abusive marriage that I can't bring myself to leave

Twitter bird in the flames of Hell by DALL-E

OK, I'll just admit it. I'm having hard time quitting Twitter.

I know I should quit. (I don't think I even need to list all the reasons why, but they all rhyme with 'husk'.)

Lord knows I've tried. I signed up for Mastodon, the decentralized alternative to Twitter that many of my colleagues have flocked to like refugees escaping a pogrom. After He Who Shall Not Be Named suspended the accounts of prominent tech journalists for allegedly sharing his "assassination coordinates," I saw a huge influx of people I know wash up on Mastodon's shores.

But using Mastodon is like stepping back in time, and not in a fun, Quantum Leap kind of way. The extremely wonky conversations and brutalist interface bring to mind Usenet or The Well: It makes me want to swap ASCII art and discuss the merits of 1200-baud modems.

I've also tried Post.News, which is far easier to use and pleasantly unchallenging -- it's the USA Today of microblogs. But also kind of dull. So far, my feed is mostly people posting weird animal news. (Did you know that female snakes have clitorises? I'm suddenly viewing "The Jungle Book" through an entirely new lens.)

It wasn't nearly this difficult to give up Facebook, which I quit back in 2018, after I'd had enough of that billionaire behaving badly. I still maintain a pseudo account there, but I hardly ever open it any more.

Twitter, though? I cannot seem to shake my addiction. Every time I think I've pulled myself away, something calls me back.

Bird is the word

It didn't start out that way. When I first signed on to "that new bird microblog" in 2007, I could go weeks without ever opening the app. Frankly, it wasn't all that interesting – mostly people sharing photos of what they had for lunch and social media gurus telling me how to "boost my engagement." For a long time I just naturally assumed Twitter would either gradually fade away or get swallowed by some larger fish.

And then, Donald Trump got elected. And Twitter became the reality TV show none of us wanted but nobody could stop watching.

(Full disclosure: From 2017 to early 2021, I was an occasional contract employee for The Bird Company – another reason why I spent increasing amounts of time there. That's my story anyway.)

When I am bored and inevitably pick up my phone, because I can no longer go more than 30 seconds without some form of digital stimulation, Twitter is the first app I open. Always. It got so bad that I set a time limit for myself: no more than an hour a day. Yet whenever my Screen Time app helpfully alerts me that I've hit the 60-minute mark, I beg for just a few minutes more.

Tweet surrender

Most of my close friends who aren't journalists don't even have Twitter accounts, let alone spend stupid amounts of time there. So why do I? There are a few reasons.

Twitter is still where news happens first – whether it's a revolution in the streets half a world away or something closer to my hood. (Was that just an earthquake? Is that fire heading toward my house? What are all those sirens I'm hearing?)

As a journalist, Twitter is like having the world's greatest experts on speed dial. Like Kevin Kruse (US history), Marcy Wheeler (security), Tom Nichols (US-Russia relations), Lawrence Tribe (law), John Cipher (CIA), and many others, all there for the price of a click. Yes, I could probably get this information another way, but how many Substacks can one man possibly subscribe to?

[Editor’s note: Please subscribe to this one.]

Without Twitter, how else would I know when someone famous has died? Or just did/said something stupid -- again. (Dave Chapelle, I'm looking at you.)

Where else can I get into a fight with semi-literate strangers about whether Stephen Curry is one of the greatest athletes of all time? (He is. Just accept it.)

Then there's the rage tweeting. Drunk tweeting. Whiny, attention-seeking tweeting. My-flight-has-been-delayed-again-and-I-need-to-vent tweeting. Political grandstanding. Dunking on MAGA heads who failed spelling in fourth grade. Snarky quizzes. Memes ripe for stealing. Memes about people stealing memes. All of these are time- and brain-cell-wasting activities, and I really need to stop.

But I think the real reason I'm finding it so hard to leave is the illusion of proximity. Twitter offers the opportunity to reach out and (virtually) touch people I would otherwise have no chance of getting close to in real life.

For example: I recently interacted with a famous supermodel, now in her 50s, on whom I've had an abiding and probably unhealthy crush since she first appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 1984.

I flirted, she LOL'd. I flirted some more. She hearted. Suddenly, my life felt complete in ways I haven't experienced since the birth of my first child.

Am I bragging? Yes. Yes, I am. But where else but Twitter could such a thing ever happen? Certainly not Mastodon or Post.

From Musk til gone

This dilemma raises a question that seems to come up with increasing frequency these days: At what point do a CEO's actions merit abandoning the products his or her company produces? According to a widely quoted psychological study, one in five CEOs are sociopaths. (Definitely a low-ball estimate.) There are plenty of fossil fuel industry executives who are doing worse things to the planet, but you never hear about people boycotting them. Jeff Bezos is no peach, but I'm not dropping Amazon (yet).

Even if he steps down and finds a competent replacement, the damage has been done. Using Twitter now is like returning home to discover that your spouse has strangled the cat, totaled your car, drained your 401K and spent the money on Taylor Swift tickets. Because as much as you might miss your significant other -- and that perfectly broken-in Barcalounger in the den -- there's no turning back.

Maybe in time Mastodon or Post or something like them will grow to fill the void in my life, encapsulating the best parts of Twitter while somehow magically avoiding the worst. One can only hope. In the interim I find myself spending altogether too much time on Instagram, Wordle, and dating apps. (The horror, the horror.)

When the bird site turned 10 years old I wrote a story for The Guardian about how using Twitter is like being stuck in a sturdy but unfulfilling marriage. The spark is long gone, but the familiarity and comfort are hard to give up.

I was really kind of hoping Twitter would simply implode under the dictatorial incompetence of the new management. But it hasn’t. So now I have to do this myself. I’m not sure I can.