Bye-Bye Birdie

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Quit Checking Twitter

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.
— Henry David Thoreau, “Life Without Principle”

I haven’t posted anything to Twitter since October 31st of last year.

I’m not sure many people have noticed, and I can’t say that I’d blame them. The last time I posted anything original there that was worth notice was back in August. Now that I have some distance, I can look back over the hundreds of retweets and my running commentary on Presidential debates and say that I wasn’t adding any value to the platform.

When I first joined Twitter back in 2006, it was a great social platform. I was a total nerd in those days (unlike now, when I am obviously a sophisticated gentleman) and jumped on the early adopter bandwagon as soon as Leo Laporte told me to. I made acquaintances, connected with friends and family, and mostly complained about work since I knew my boss wouldn’t know what Twitter was for another few years at best.

Over time, Twitter gradually turned into that special kind of addiction that social media does so well. It became my main source of news and other information, and I used it as an (often embarrassing) live journal for my daily activities.

By 2016, I realized — with some major help from the US elections — that Twitter had begun to do me more harm than good. Most of my time on the service was spent sending or reading retweets from people I didn’t know, and getting excited about news that wasn’t properly vetted yet (does everyone remember when Mike Pence asked to be removed from the ballot? No? That was a pretty fun “fact” for about 30 minutes).

I had always thought that maintaining a good presence and network on Twitter would help me out in my career, too. But in August I had to lay off several employees, and Twitter proved very unhelpful to me in trying to help them find new jobs. If it can’t help them, how can it help me?

I decided to consciously take a break back in October, and I have to say I haven’t missed it. Here’s what I’m doing instead to make sure I stay on top of the news:

• Subscribed to The Week. The Week is a US news publication that — surprise — comes out on a weekly basis. They try to present all the important stories of the week with as much bias as possible; that is, they share the facts and then tell you how both sides have responded to it. It makes for a great read on Saturday that catches me up.
• Daily emails from CNN. Although CNN is… somewhat less unbiased… they have a couple of great daily news summary emails — one in the evening and one in the morning — that make for a great daily check-in on what’s happening. I can satisfy my FOMO without having to check into the news every 5 minutes.
• RSS feeds. Some topics are really important to me, especially the ones that relate to my job. So I’ve subscribed to a bunch of prominent blogs and publications that talk about project management and leadership and software development. I have to spend a little bit more time filtering through the articles to find interesting things, but it’s a lot less time than I was spending sorting through the commentary and arguments on Twitter, so it’s a net win.
• Read more. I still occasionally find myself bored with my phone, and the urge to open the Twitter app (or even worse, Facebook) comes up. So instead I open Pocket, or Blinkist, or pull my Kindle out of my back pocket and do more productive reading. This is a great way to replace the social media habit, and is much more conducive to learning and growing as a person.

I know a lot of people still get great value out of Twitter as a service. I also know that the problems I was experiencing pale in comparison to the persistent issues the company has had with abuse and censorship. While I won’t check it very often (if at all), I still plan to keep my account active since it may prove useful. But in the middle of all the overbearing election coverage, I realized that Twitter fatigue had set in, and now that I’ve given myself some time away from the platform I feel like my life is better off without it.