My unhealthy relationship with Twitter

Written April 26, 2022, before Cohost went public.

I've been on Twitter since 2009 or so, though I had almost exclusively a locked account until 2017 or so. It has become so integrated in my life that I'm not really sure how living works without it. When I think about leaving Twitter I get incredibly anxious. But also, any time I have even the briefest of quiet moments without something to focus on I immediately find myself looking at Twitter to fill that time. And whenever I do anything but look at Twitter it's like I have a timer running in my head that goes "oh it's probably been enough time that there's new tweets to look at that will make me feel more connected to my friends :)" so I struggle to do anything uninterrupted for more than an hour or two before I feel the urge to look at Twitter. The pandemic of course made this 1000% worse than ever. Even in the very short time I've been writing this post I am already feeling the need to check Twitter and see any new tweets from people I know. I have my priv timeline where everything my friends say seems Important to make sure I see; and then I have a list called "buddies" on main that has all my online friends I've never met in person.

So with Elon Musk buying Twitter, obviously I'm thinking about quitting Twitter, but it makes me extremely anxious. How do I live without it? What if I lose touch with all of my friends who I only talk to every so often? What will I do without my 3.2k followers as a platform to share my writing? What if I need to crowdfund something? Can I really trust myself to remember all my friends and reach out to have active conversations with them regularly? Will I realize how many of these relationships are incredibly shallow and superficial and basically two-way parasocial relationships where we're essentially "fans of each other" but have no meaningful relationship to speak of?

A part of this anxiety is that in 2016 I deleted my Facebook and exactly what I was afraid of happened. People stopped inviting me to things because they "invited me on Facebook" even though I deleted my account. Or they'd forget I even exist to invite me because I didn't show up on their list of friends. My entire local social life completely collapsed and it made me feel like all those friends never truly had a deep connection with me to begin with, whether or not that was true. What would leaving Twitter do to me?

Social media in general creates this sense of having a near-constant mind-meld with everyone you've ever met and cared to stay in touch with. Everyone stream-of-consciousness posts what they're feeling and thinking and you get to be aware of it all day all week. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I see right next to the time I woke up is that I have like three Twitter replies on my priv account. People saw my thoughts and feelings and responded to them. People who I never reached out to for advice about something are offering me advice and support unprompted. Friends who I wouldn't have otherwise known were feeling sad or insecure are saying that my unsolicited comments made them feel better.

My inability to pull myself away. Doomscrolling when I wake up and before I go to sleep. It's not good for me! There's so much anxiety brought into my life that is purely from Twitter and Twitter Drama and strangers on Twitter being mad at me. It truly does feel like an addiction when I think about how many of my hours every day are spent on Twitter. A huge barrier to my ability to focus on reading through books is the constant urge to check Twitter before I even get through 2 pages of a 350 page book. And reading books is pretty important for a librarian.

And now Elon Musk, the richest man in the world whose wealth originated with Apartheid Africa and who racially segregates his union-busting factories is becoming my "dealer" who controls my experience of this augment to my brain. Controls the medium by which all the information in the world is constantly funneled into my brain. He's going to make it worse, it will surely make my mental health worse too. And all the ads, corporate propaganda, constantly feeding into my brain, will be profiting one of the worst people to ever live.

If I can get all my friends to use Co-Host for their casual thoughts and feelings posting then at least my "dealer" for that sense of constant connection is just my friend JKap and not Elon Musk. At least JKap is trying to improve the brain augment and not remove moderation and push NFTs and Cryptocurrency that are destroying the environment.

So, hopefully! When Cohost goes public, I can get like, my old friends from college and the like to use it the way they use priv twitter. Though I have a feeling that this is unlikely!!

One potential option is just deleting my Main twitter, but that removes my Platform, which is a valuable asset for promoting my writing and reaching new audiences for... my "writing"... which isn't really my career. It's not materially important. I just want people to read my writing, which won't ever happen otherwise. I have no venue.

But all my efforts to "check main less" haven't fixed the fundamental problem that I am addicted to Checking Twitter even when it's my other timelines that aren't really as unhealthy since they don't bring about constant harassment. I often find myself scrolling the AD timeline when I'm not horny at all just for More Content to Scroll Through to calm down the anxious itching feeling to Check Twitter. It feels comparable to when someone needs a cig. The longer they go they just get gradually more and more anxious and unable to focus on anything unless until they go and get it. At least twitter doesn't destroy my lungs but it does destroy my sleep. I have dreams about checking Twitter.

I need to find a solution to this which won't cause me to lose all of the benefits I get from Twitter... but ultimately for the time being I'm truly addicted. Even now I know that the first thing I'm going to do after I click post is check twitter. it's undeniable.