Best "I quit Twitter and my life is richer for it" story?

March 23, 2023 7:11 AM

I need to overcome my Twitter addiction. For me, it's not really outrage porn so much as an opportunity to have fun with language and humor and get the dopamine from my narcissistic and childish desire for recognition of being clever or witty. Especially when I'm lonely working at home, it can feel impossible not to get sucked in. Would appreciate any sources of inspiration that making the effort to resist will pay off in the end...
posted by Jon44 to Health & Fitness (19 answers total)

I talk to my friends more and have never been closer. When my urge to be clever and connect and share my silly thoughts and jokes comes for me... I open the group chat now instead of Twitter. I be funny to them, or share an article with them. I've never been closer to these friends even though we've never lived further apart.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 7:28 AM on March 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

I stuck around mainly for the cute animal stories but I haven’t missed it for even a moment since I deleted the app. Surprisingly easy & entirely, instantly worthwhile.
posted by rd45 at 7:29 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

I quit when Musk officially took ownership, only doing a bit of work during the post-Musk period when I was working to get more friends to switch over to Mastodon and occasionally popping in when he had done something particularly heinous to ask why this wasn't the final straw for people (these are people who only used it for entertainment and not their jobs).

Luckily, I developed an aversion to it because I couldn't stomach contributing to that horrid person's net worth, functionally working for him for free, so it was fairly easy to not go over there, but two other things helped:

1. Setting up an account on Mastodon, where several of my friends did also go. Mastodon is quieter than Twitter, but it kind of feels like the Good Old Days of Twitter where things were less of a firehose of bad news and more about creativity and friendships. I miss some people on Twitter, but Mastodon helps with that part of the addiction. I think it might help for you too, because there is an active group of people on there so you just have to get started and follow people. I quickly grew my following by following others and posting regularly so now I have lots of people to chat with; not as many as my Twitter account had (I was small-time Twitter Famous, mostly in my own city, but also in my particular area of interest), but enough to sate that desire for banter and conversation.

2. I cleared out my following and followers list on Twitter so that there was no one there to see anything I posted and I couldn't get sucked in by what my friends had posted and reply. I also put my account in private; I don't want to delete it because I am concerned about squatters impersonating me, but I won't contribute more to Musk's site, nor will I let people retweet my past content.
posted by urbanlenny at 7:32 AM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

I used to be fairly prominent on Twitter a number of years ago (I had a five-figure number of followers). At some point I just got fed up with the context collapse and the way I was tailoring my posting and ultimately even my thinking to the expectations of my audience. I was afraid I'd lose an intellectual and political and even personal community. After I nuked my account, I found I didn't. Instead, in the rearview mirror I can see how superficial the intellectual and political life really is on there, even when the posters are good people. Everything is just too warped by the ever-present need to be quickest on the draw with a quip, regardless of whether there's any validity to it or not. There are a few things I miss, mostly bots, but not walking around with the Twitter brain churning in my head all the time has made it really worth it. I love being Offline Boyfriend.
posted by derrinyet at 7:33 AM on March 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

Mastodon is quieter than Twitter, but it kind of feels like the Good Old Days of Twitter where things were less of a firehose of bad news and more about creativity and friendships.

This really helped for me. Like derrinyet, I had a lot of engagement on Twitter and while I'm still not 100% off of it I've definitely moved to Mastodon to get that same general interactive feeling and I 100% agree with urbanlenny that it feels nice there for the most part. Especially if you get on an instance you like (there's a MeFi one, btw) there's a small town feel that I enjoy. For me I had some regular interactions that I did on Twitter (kept a booklist, mentioned what Wikipedia work I'd been doing) and I just stopped doing it over there and moved it. Also, a big aspect: removing the app from your phone so you're less likely to do mindless checkins.

Also don't beat yourself up over how you felt about Twitter. While there are a lot of hardliners, there's just also a lot of THERE there in terms of being able to follow brands and people who are legit funny and interesting, provocative and informative. It's okay to like it, it just sounds like it might be better for you to move on. No big deal. Other things, as people have noted.

- look for themed Discords, Slacks or chat groups with some of the same people
- "lean in" to the loneliness a little and maybe see if there's another thing that might be helping (this is me to a T and I've found that tossing myself into things like cooking or birdwatching lets me still be alone and get some work done)
- think local and see if there's a group of people who are local to you who are in a Discord or Slack or chat. I found sometimes with my Extremely Online life returning to the local can be good. There's a Vermont-area Slack that just has a few idle bullshitting channels and I like them to remember that there are people all around me in sort of the same boat.

Above all, don't worry about it. We're all here doing our best.
posted by jessamyn at 7:44 AM on March 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

I find different outlets for feeling clever. Some are approximately just as dumb (I post here more now). But some are much more useful. For example, used to be, if I had an idea relevant to my work, I might write up a tweet or a thread to memorialize it and get that instant feedback feeling. I did some good thinking on there, but it didn't naturally build into cumulative progress. Now I start developing it in my notes instead and it's much better.
posted by grobstein at 7:51 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Well, I started using MetaFilter again (note the 11-year gap in my activity). I guess you can assess the richness factor of that for yourself...
posted by staggernation at 7:54 AM on March 23, 2023 [11 favorites]

I quit Twitter quite a few years ago, after I started googling each of my clever ideas for a tweet, and was seeing that 2 or 3 other people somewhere in the world had already tweeted the same idea word for word.

I stand by my belief that Richard Quest should wear a cape though.
posted by cardboard at 8:00 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Nthing joining a Mastodon instance. I quit Twitter the day Musk acquired it after having belonged forever, and haven't regretted it at all. It was fun reading the federated feed and looking for people to follow, just as in the old days with Twitter, and I was reminded that half the time, the best part of any such thing is the first year.

I'm not nearly as angry and panicky now. I deliberately joined an instance that wasn't edgy, and I have been following people who are quirky rather than ALL CAPS SHOUTERS.

My only complaint is that some people insist on tooting links to Twitter, but I believe you can "mute" Twitter somehow if you like.
posted by Peach at 8:03 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

The best thing about Mastodon imo is it's a lot less fun. Kind of like a narcotic replacement therapy maybe.
posted by grobstein at 8:11 AM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

After I deleted Twitter, I went outside and got hooked on apps to identify trees and recognize bird songs. It felt better for the soul than combing through angry notifications. Heard a lot of robins and tried to get better at telling the difference between sycamores and maples.
posted by johngoren at 8:15 AM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

There as a time from 2018-2019 that I was extremely addicted to Twitter. I managed an unofficial account for a popular indie band, and I spent a lot of my free time trying to find obscure photos and links to interesting interviews with the band. I rapidly gained followers, and the fans eagerly looked forward to the content that I posted. I got addicted to the dopamine rush that I would get when many people liked or retweeted my content.

Eventually I realized that I was basically doing unpaid internet labor (i.e. free marketing for the band) and that my efforts would best be spent in other pursuits. I deleted my account, and I haven't looked back since.

The process to quit an addiction looks different for each person, but I think the key thing is to understand a) what emotional need you are trying to meet by fueling this addiction, and b) once you've quit the addiction, finding a substitute that will help you to meet this need in a healthier manner.

In my case, I was able to fill the need for validation and emotional connection by participating in Discord groups, Meetup groups, and also keeping in touch with IRL friends.
posted by carnival_night_zone at 8:19 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Whatever social media you use, turn off notifications. I still use twitter, mostly for political news and to re-post good political tweets on Twitter and elsewhere. I do not have twitter, fb, or other social media apps on my phone - web only, so I only go there when I choose to, not in response to a noise or lock screen notification.
posted by theora55 at 8:32 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Comedian Hasan Minhaj quit Twitter quite spectacularly last month - link goes to the excellent 10 minute video on his Instagram.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 9:16 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Some stuff still falls through the gaps for me.

For example, if I was on Twitter, then about 45 seconds ago I would have gone on there and posted, "Has anyone learned how to read barcodes by eye? Would that be fun?"

Now, oftentimes, these moments are simply lost. Fortunately, today I have this thread. Sometimes I send screenshots of dumb-looking stuff to patient friends. And, again, the note-taking system is a good outlet for some stuff. But I can't just dump a bunch of stupid garbage into the thing I'm using to write my dissertation.
posted by grobstein at 9:30 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I quit Twitter in early 2020. My criteria for Twitter was "is this fun for me?" and in early 2020 it stopped being fun. Why? Because I realized, at root, that Twitter is basically nothing but a repetition machine. Excluding outrage-filter (I had my feed curated to within an inch of its life, so I never saw most of that stuff) there's always:

- a daily main character
- a daily funny meme or three
- a daily "this was in the news lol"
- a daily "remember when someone tweeted this"

And once I saw the pattern of it, I started going "do I really need this in my life?" and in 2020, the answer to that was finally "nah".

I can't sit here and say my life is radically better for leaving Twitter, or that Twitter was actively bad for me; I enjoyed it at first, and it was fun until it wasn't, and then I stopped. And I didn't even stop because I had grown to hate it; it just didn't seem worth my energy. I wish I had some "and my relationships with real-world people got SO MUCH RICHER!"-type stories to share here, but I don't, because they didn't; those relationships weren't bad while I was on Twitter, and they stayed at the same level of good after I left. Your mileage may vary on that.

The main thing I noticed after I left, though, was the extent to which I had seemingly, subconsciously, trained myself to process events through "how will this play on Twitter?" or "how can I snark about this on Twitter?". Once I couldn't answer that question any more, because I wasn't exposed to Twitter, those questions stopped dominating my head when I'd see something interesting in the news/culture, and I started processing things differently. I'm not sure I can quantify exactly how differently, but I stopped taking in information with one eye focused on how to put it back out there cleverly, if that makes sense.

I'm not sure my story is all that "inspiring", but I'm also not sure it has to be. If it's still fun for you, stick with it, but if you're concerned about addiction, maybe explore any of the various app timers or any similar functionality to limit your daily use of it?
posted by pdb at 3:00 PM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

For me, I tend to take things very literally, so I was trying to use Twitter to connect with people ("social" media), but it's not made for that. It's made for public performance. There is a culture there that is actually hostile to connection ("reply guy" being a common insult). Likes and retweets are the preferred way to interact, and if you respond to anything either by replying or QRTing you are seen as inconveniencing or trying to upstage the OP. But you also shouldn't go back through old tweets to like or retweet them, as that's weird (?!). It's a place where everyone is a "tryhard" but nobody wants to be seen as one. I didn't realize until I got away how exhausting that was.

Now, I'm a gay commie nerd, so I went back to tumblr, and now when I talk to people they talk back. We have conversations and become friends and stuff.

I also really don't miss the atmosphere of anger and disdain Twitter has. Major improvement in my mood and life.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 6:05 AM on March 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

I do miss having somewhere to post stuff like "more like lao gran ma am i right"
posted by grobstein at 4:28 PM on March 24, 2023

Honestly, I was already thinking of quitting Twitter right before the Musk takeover.

The biggest reason was - I was getting mean. I was almost exclusively using it to indulge in the kind of smack-talk that Totally Pwns the Magas or whatever - it had basically become my two-minutes' hate. And then one day I realized that wait - people I loved and respected were following me on Twitter....and that meant, they were seeing me say this shit, and seeing that ugly side of me.

And then I further realized that this ugly side of me didn't even really exist before I got on Twitter in the first place. And that's when I quit.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:01 AM on August 17, 2023