I just deleted my Twitter account. Since April 2008, when I signed onto Twitter, it was my favorite social media platform. True, there were some rough periods until I learned how to block people and terms, but for the most part it was wonderful.
closest to Twitter I’m going to get
What I find interesting is that I’ve written a lot of articles about Twitter, including this one from back in February, when my online social media life seemed to be the only thing I could relate to, 5 months after my mother had passed away. I’m surprised I didn’t write about my issues with the “new guy” possibly taking over Twitter, who I’d never heard of until maybe 4 years ago, and didn’t know anything about until last year, trying to back out, the Twitter board working hard to force him to buy it so they could all get rich quickly and then him finally buying it last Friday.
I fussed about it enough in person and on Slack; how the heck did I forget to fuss about it here? Well… when I think about it, the thought that this particular guy was saying he was going to buy Twitter, then made a bid on it, totally freaked me out. It threw off my balance, and at the time all I could think about was creating a page on Facebook where I could share things I’ve written and videos I’ve created, without any thought about the fact that I would no longer share any of that stuff on Twitter again if the deal went through.
With that said, I have to admit that I totally lament the loss of being on Twitter. I had basically set it up so that I was connected to a 5th of the people who were following me. I had blocked lots of words and topics I didn’t want to see in my feed, and overall my Twitter stream was pretty peaceful. I probably could have stayed on Twitter and not had anything getting in my way of enjoying it like normal.
But I don’t roll like that. I don’t accept bad behavior in any way, which includes the way he decided to ruin my Twitter life and indirectly has allowed stuff like this to start happening since he decided to advocate freedom of speech (which, if he expects advertisers to use the platform anymore, that’s not going to work), Kyrie doing stupid stuff like this and getting away with it, and, for once, “this guy” finally has to deal with repercussions for his stupidity and rhetoric.
I’d rather not deal with any of them, and I’m pretty good at that. I’ve never been a fan of “that guy” (nope, not saying any of his names), and knew since 2009 that he was going to be trouble and I’ve been totally right. But his fans constantly forgave him; now it’s kind of a 50-50 split; some folks are hard to convince on what’s proper.
I knew Kyrie was going to be trouble in 2017 when he demanded a trade from the Cleveland basketball team, and every year he’s been consistent in being more of a troublemaker than a world class athlete. Colin Kaepernack stood up for a cause and a “people”; Kyrie stood up for the right to infect and kill people, tried to stop NBA players from playing in 2020 when he wasn’t able to play because he was out during an injury, and now this recent antisemitic stuff… who’s actually surprised by all of this?
Ugh… sigh… back to talking about what I loved about being on Twitter. I talked to people all around the world; I got to help edit one of Guy Kawasaki’s books. I got to talk to a bunch of celebrities and social media influencers, all of whom followed and reached out to me first (Kathy Ireland, Nile Rodgers, Derrick Coleman, and Taye Diggs to name a few). I also got to meet a lot of social media influencers there, which was pretty cool.
But along came the second “he who must not be named“, and that was the last straw. I don’t support bad behavior from anyone, even entitled billionaires. I knew what was coming so I stopped participating back in April, and I held out until last Friday, when he officially took over… and still got to keep Tesla after having a few other billionaires decide to back him taking it over.
A couple of friends asked why I let someone else ruin my fun; I said because I can’t support anything or anyone I don’t trust. When all a person has to do is throw their financial weight around to get what they want, especially if it affects others, they’re not trustworthy in my opinion. He’s not the first rich person I’ve disassociated with, and probably won’t be the last.
It’s always about having standards; if you can’t hold onto your ethics, what use are you to anyone else? At least I’m not going to remove most of what I’ve written in the past about how to use the site better; I’m not quite that petty, and as long as it might help those who decide to stick around, I’ll leave it here… for at least a while.
That’s all I’ve got; I’ll easily move on from there.
Hi Mitch, you are not alone! I’ve seen a few people in the last few days talk about deleting their Twitter accounts. I confess, Twitter to me, is mostly a sharing tool for blog posts and other things of interest – not a hotbed of political rhetoric. Mind you, I see it and scroll on by. If the second “he who must not be named“ reinstates the first “he who must not be named“, there will surely be a mass exodus.
I don’t doubt it Debbie. Truth be told, I could keep using Twitter because I was already blocking all the content and people I didn’t want to deal with. However, in good conscience I just can’t do it, because every person who stays benefits that man, and even though he doesn’t know who I am I refuse to give him the satisfaction of my participation. If I was truly petty I’d remove all the tips I’ve written over the year on how to use it better… which could still happen at a later time if I hear worse stuff than I’m hearing now.
Hi Mitch, Sorry to hear about your leaving. One thing I will note, you cannot rely on one social media network alone. I’ve seen many professional Meta pages being taken down for no reason. I get emails about businesses that lost income become of it and I just saw a client of mine go through it. No response from Facebook or Meta as to why. Twitter never responded to inquiries either over the years but Elon is there answering questions from just about everyone now. It will be interesting to see where all these companies go, maybe social media will all fail in the coming years. Nothing would surprise me anymore Mitch.
With all that said, having our OWN blogs is the best thing we can do for our businesses and probably our health too.
I had to do it Lisa. Trust me, FB isn’t my only release, but having my own page that’s not set up privately means I can share pretty much anything I wish, although there’s certain topics I probably won’t share there since I know the folks there aren’t going to be the audience for it. So, some of the topics will be shared on LinkedIn, and others just for those who subscribe to the feed or happen to find it via Google somehow. Also, at least I still have blogs to comment on, and some of them have CommentLuv, so I get to share my articles with some of those readers. 🙂
Good on you for taking a stand. Each of us votes with something: wallet, attention and reputation.
It’s a crying shame that the one platform that fought disinformation has been acquired by the one person least likely to uphold the ideals behind that never-ending battle.
Cheers,
Mitch
I like the way you put that Mitchell; wish I’d thought of that lol You know the saying: if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything. I’ll hold out hope that he’ll decide to bail after one year of ownership, because he’s never going to make the kind of money he’s making from his other endeavors… plus, no matter how much I loved Twitter, I’d have rather played with SpaceX… as long as he wasn’t around.
Thanks. Will Twitter recover, in that scenario?
Cheers,
Mitch
I’m not sure about that. What I do know is that if it happened I’d definitely go back and do my best to make it a nicer place again. Heck, I might allow myself to follow more people than I did before. 🙂
I always appreciate people who live their principles and don’t make adjustments based solely upon convenience. It shows character.
I haven’t left the dumpster fire yet because I haven’t decided if sticking around to push back is actually doing any good or an excuse not to do something inconvenient.
Been around Twitter since about 2009 or so and miss the fun I used to have there. That still happens periodically but it is harder to find.
Anyway, I may be out of there soon too and appreciate your stand, it really does show character.
Thanks Josh. There’s three major things going on that needs to be looked at. One, that man’s talking about the possibility of putting Twitter in bankruptcy, and it’s all his fault. Two, the blue check mark thing was rolled out stupidly, causing all sorts of grief without actually verifying anyone and advertisers bailing in droves. Three, the treatment of the employees; if there’s ever a lesson any leader going into a new situation should know, it’s that you don’t immediately start getting rid of people, let alone disrupt how they work, without a true evaluation of what they’re already bringing to the table. If you treat the people who are supposed to be helping you run a business badly, then your company’s going to fail.
Not trying to convince you or anything, just throwing out the facts. I mean really, it’s become a dumpster fire in just two weeks! I guess the crypto company crashing and burning today is financially worse, but at least it succeeded before it learned it couldn’t sustain itself.