I’ve read a lot of “goodbye Twitter” articles over the past few weeks. They almost always seem to start with a litany of negative symptoms that the author thinks Twitter is causing. I understand the inclination — it’s easy to identify the things that aren’t going well. The things that don’t feel right. It’s exciting to think about these burdens being lifted from your shoulders.
I’ve noticed that many of these missives end with some sort of admission that the author has either come back to the service (while promising that their eyes have been opened to the reality of the situation and this time they won’t become addicted) or never really left at all. Something about the standard approach to leaving social media behind doesn’t seem to really do the trick.
So, I’m going to try a different tack with this article. Let’s start with trying to better understand what I’m excited to be moving toward -- the future that ideally becomes more attainable by stepping away from Twitter.
Channeling creative energy into larger and more complex outputs
For someone with creative ambitions, Twitter seems uniquely constructed to undermine me. The development of an idea and the steady chipping away at it, is something that takes time and patience and an extremely high boredom threshold. I’ve found some of my most prolific bursts of creativity have come during times when I was experimenting with removing Twitter from my life. Without Twitter, the motivational and creative steam I need to run the Industrial Era steel mill that is my creative process is allowed to build and build and build. Twitter is a vent that lets that steam escape at periodic intervals. If I don’t let it build to the level where I feel like I have to do something creative or else something bad is going to happen to the intricate workings of my factory-brain then I have a tendency to make nothing other than tweets. Some people have a way of making tweets art. My tweets are not art. My tweets are my procrastination made visible.
Let me articulate it more simply: creative, professional, and personal endeavors that are likely to involve frustration and a willingness to sit with boredom are interesting to me because I don’t think I’ve made very many of those things. Twitter is too easy a creative outlet and I think it undermines my ability to do cooler stuff than I currently do. If I remove this extremely convenient escape hatch from my range of options, might I have an easier time sticking with difficult things? It’s not guaranteed, but I think it gives me much more of a fighting chance.
MORE: Better, longer, and more complex writing on SamSpurlin.com and TheReady.com, more consistent and interesting issues of The Deliberate, exploring freelance writing opportunities, exploring writing a book, etc.
LESS: Having a halfway decent idea and throwing it on Twitter to see what people think, with the vague idea of turning it into an article, only to never touch it again. Tricking myself that writing a couple pithy tweets is the same thing as writing.
Channeling curiosity by consuming longer, more complex and more nuanced information
I love the feeling of consuming news essentially as it’s happening. It feels like I’m there. Like I’m in the mix and seeing what’s happening in real time. It’s almost like watching a movie or playing a video game. I’m a scraggly barn cat getting squirt with milk right from the cow’s udder.
And holy shit is that an unwholesome way to consume news.
Getting news from Twitter is like how I imagine kitesurfing works: you become intimately familiar with the moment-to-moment reality of the surface of the water because every little wave and updraft has a visible impact on your ability to stay upright. It’s what allows you to keep looking like a supremely cool dude catching some righteous waves and not getting a face full of surf. Just navigating that environment likely takes every bit of skill and attention that you have and it can seem like that’s what the whole ocean is. It’s all consuming and it’s fun.
I don’t know that news should be all consuming and I’m pretty sure it probably shouldn’t be fun the way kitesurfing is (presumably) fun. If a kite surfer is a master of the intimate surface, I’m interested in becoming whatever it is that cares more about what’s going on far below the surface. A submariner? A whale? What’s going on down there? How is it affecting what’s going on up at the surface? (Why would I pick an aquatic metaphor when I grew up in the Midwest?)
MORE: Reading long magazine and journal articles, newspapers, books, and other sources of information that aren’t ripped from the breaking news headlines.
LESS: Trusting algorithms to put the “right” stuff in front of me, staying extremely up to date on everything. Feeling like knowing what is happening is the same thing as understanding why something is happening.
The opportunity to be more deliberate in refilling my creative and inspirational reservoirs
There’s a whole world of interesting, inspiring and thought-provoking stuff out there that I don’t think I’m doing a very good job exploring because “the algorithm” doesn’t surface it to me. The algorithm is great at figuring out what it thinks I’ll find interesting within the bubble of the people and topics I already follow or have expressed interest in. But that’s not how I want to explore the world. I want to explore things that I’m unlikely to find interesting. I want to choose to go this way and not that way. I want the search for inspiration and beauty and art to be a vigorously proactive exploration, not delivered to me as some kind of passive buffet of lukewarm things I’ve kind of liked before.
MORE: Deliberately choosing fiction, movies, music, and other art. Asking people for recommendations. Aimless wandering. Following my nose.
LESS: Mindless consumption of the admittedly cool and mostly unsurprising stuff Twitter likes to show me.
Untangling myself from the need for validation from others
Twitter pushes some very primal and maladaptive buttons in my brain. I’m a huge sucker for validation from others. Without making this a quasi-therapy session, let’s just say that I’ve never really felt like I belong much of anywhere. Never quite good enough, or with the right qualifications, or the right experiences to really be part of the in group. Classic Impostor Syndrome stuff, I know. One way I’ve learned to calm down that voice in my head that tells me I’m not good enough is to collect words of affirmation from people I admire. Or, now that we’re in the social media age, Likes and Retweets and Mentions from people I admire — which are the digital equivalent of pats on the head.
That is no way to live. I’m tired of tweeting something and then watching my notifications anxiously while I see who did or didn’t throw me some kind of digital reward. I’m tired of being a pigeon pecking a lever and waiting for food to come out at random intervals.
It’s time to learn how to not give a shit (or at least less of a shit) about what people think. It’s time to learn to give myself the affirmation that Twitter makes far too easy to rely on others to provide.
MORE: Developing my own sense of taste, exploring unpopular ideas without fear of social ramifications.
LESS: Hoping the right people see my stuff and think it’s good. Trying to be clever in public.
Giving myself space to explore nuance
I’m not one to decry “cancel culture.” In most cases, cancel culture is just a stupid way of saying “having to face the consequences of acting shitty.” But I’ve seen enough Twitter mobs to know that they don’t always get it right. I’ve seen what happens when any sense of nuance gets destroyed with the wrong thing going viral.
A couple weeks ago a podcaster and musician I’ve followed for literally over a decade became a meme because of a series of ill-advised tweets. He became “Bean Dad.” To the mob that formed, his series of tweets became evidence that he was a child abuser and anti-Semite. Anyone who has listened to his multiple podcasts every week for years knew this was not true. We had the context of who he is. His struggles and triumphs with mental health. The obvious pride and joy he has at being a father. And, yes, how being a bit of a dick is part of his brand. None of that nuance matters, though, when you have a bad day, tweet something stupid, and the mob wakes up.
Being a surly person is not generally part of my brand. I’m not super sarcastic and I generally don’t try to make myself stand out on Twitter by being shocking in any way. But I do have bad days. I do make lapses in judgement. I am not perfect.
Twitter is a nuance destruction machine. I like nuance. I don’t know that I’m particularly good at it, but it seems like the type of thing worth getting better at navigating. Being nuanced in my writing and thinking. Being nuanced in understanding what others are saying and arguing. I think the world would be a better place if we spent less time speaking or thinking in polar dichotomies. Nuance requires room to breathe and a platform where brevity is its calling card is not particularly well-suited to nurture particularly nuanced takes on just about anything. At the very least, if I want to practice being more nuanced then I need a place to do it… and Twitter ain’t it.
MORE: Exploring the contours, depths, and jagged edges of what’s going on in the world. More peace of mind knowing I’m not one poorly worded or ill-advised joke tweet away from having my professional life upended.
LESS: Certainty in, well, everything.
Some Pertinent Questions
I’ve been chipping away at this article for days, making it longer and longer, rewriting and rewriting, because I think part of me is afraid that once I finish it I’ll need to go ahead and pull the plug. So, in the spirit of a.) capturing those fears in an effort to allay them and b.) doing so quickly, I’m going to knock this next section out FAQ-style.
Aren’t you going to feel isolated?
Maybe! But I’m going to remember that I have lots and lots of people who I could text, email, or gasp call. I’m also going to keep my Open Office Hours going and I’m known to plaster my email all over the place, so I have a feeling I won’t be hurting for human interaction.
Aren’t you shooting your future professional endeavors in the foot?
Maybe! I guess I won’t necessarily be known as a quippy and fun organization design thinker/consultant on Twitter. Luckily, even though it’s easy to think that’s a large part of my job, it turns out it really isn’t. In fact, trading Twitter time for writing time (or speaking time or getting better at my craft time or even just true rejuvenation time) will probably do much more for my professional endeavors than maintaining a fun Twitter feed.
Are you going to be worse at your job?
Maybe! I used to find lots of interesting articles related to organizations and organization design in my Twitter timeline. Luckily, there are lots of other places to find good things to read and reading fewer things deeper is probably good for me anyway.
Aren’t you bailing on the actual hard thing (learning how to use social media with moderation)?
Maybe! I agree that if I truly had mastery over my attention I probably wouldn’t write a multi-thousand word article about leaving Twitter. I just... wouldn’t ever open the app. Alas, it turns out I am mostly human and I have the foibles and weaknesses of anyone who has struggled with curtailing a pleasurable yet harmful behavior. I’ve learned enough about myself through my personal experiments to know I’m a cold turkey kind of guy.
What will you do when you want to have a short break? When you’re waiting in line for something? After dinner when you just want to kill some time before bed?
I don’t know! Probably be bored some, or even most, of the time. It’s probably going to suck at first but I’m guessing it will suck less over time. I’m excited to find out.
You think you’re better than me?
God, no.
Let’s Wrap This Thing Up
I haven’t come to this decision lightly. I’ve been making it for the past couple years... and then all at once. I’ve experimented with removing Twitter and other social media from my life for varying lengths of time. As anyone who I’ve followed for a long time knows, I unfollow and re-follow people multiple times a year as I go through phases of trying out new (coping) strategies. What has always united these experiments is that I always felt good while I did them. I always felt calmer and happier. I would write more. I would read more. And then, inevitably, I’d have a down evening or feel like I earned the ability to kill some time and the next thing I knew I’d be re-downloading the apps and re-following the usual suspects and without much of a deliberate decision I would have slid back into my status quo. And things would be fine for awhile! I would convince myself that using this tool was actually super important and useful. This time would be different!
And the discomfort and disquiet would slowly grow until I did another experiment. And the cycle would continue.
No more. No more cycle. Time to chart a new path.
Goodbye!
P.S. There are still many ways to connect with me if you’re so inclined. My email is sam@samspurlin.com and I legitimately like receiving email from strangers. I literally have a link where you can sign up to have an honest to god conversation with me about literally anything right here. I also write here at SamSpurlin.com and I have a newsletter called The Deliberate and I have a podcast called Fields of Work. So, I’m around. Say hi.