Ditching Twitter | Incisive.nu
I’ve been on Twitter since the beginning of 2008. In the six and a half years since I joined, I’ve used the service enthusiastically, exuberantly, without the professional/adult restraint that many of my peers have wisely elected to maintain. Before it got big, when I lived in a little apartment with red walls in Portland, Twitter was my water cooler, my connection to freelance colleagues and a few friends in the tech world. Later on, in Brooklyn (and Queens and Manhattan and Portland again and Brooklyn again), it became a treasured part of a broader social life, encompassing work and grad school and friends from all over.
I called it my rosary, the thing I reached for when I felt anxious, after Metafilter stopped serving that purpose. As Twitter expanded and my own little slice of it grew as well, I called it my front porch and defended its quirks and downsides. But now the magic has turned, in ways that have felt irrevocable. I’m not angry at Twitter for changing, but I’ve been sad to feel that something so oddly entwined with my intellectual and emotional life is now beyond my use.
