Also twitter is likely not going anywhere and the more people write about it and say it is the less likely I think it’s going bye bye. So much noise and so little signal about all of this. I’m amazed at how big of a conversation this Twitter thing is, I could hardly care about what some rich billionaire is doing with a social media outlet.
I quit Twitter a few months ago and don’t miss it. I have a Facebook account still but rarely visit it. Social media was fun in its early years, but eventually, humans ruin most things. And in recent years, all Twitter and Facebook did was depress or infuriate me. My mental health is far better without them. They never did much to grow my writing “career” either. They are mainly just time sucks. Substack is growing organically for me now. I haven’t promoted it since January and my subscriber numbers are growing faster than ever. So good riddance, social media, I say. It’s time for something better.
Thanks, Jackie. This needed saying. I quit Twitter a few months ago. I can’t abide the aggression and controversy. I am still hanging on to Facebook for the moment - though I dislike it more every day.
I am wary of trying other platforms though, given what a train wreck Twitter and Facebook became. I would like to engage more within the Substack space, but to be honest, I find that intimidating and a bit of a task to engage with. I guess I am out of solutions then, and it’s back to the traditional model of the lonely writer scribbling away in her garret?? 😅
Twitter has been part of my media diet for years, but I’m considering cutting back. The last few weeks have been a lot, lol.
I’m considering taking that Twitter time and investing it into my Substack and Discord. I’m also considering experimenting with Tumblr, which has a creative vibe.
At the end of the day, I probably should think about what I want from social media these days and plan from there.
Automattic (the company that owns WordPress.com and Tumblr) said they are interested in hiring people from Twitter. So that could be interesting for the future.
I've never been on social media and I don't care to start now. But the tantrum people are throwing over all this seems petty and probably pointless. I doubt Twitter is going anywhere, whether its most extreme activist users migrate to different platforms or not. Social media is broken in lots of ways, and maybe everyone who uses it should take a deep, long look at the ways they contribute to that brokenness before they start casting stones and looking to reproduce those problems elsewhere.
Our society is disordered and dysfunctional because it lacks a sense of purpose and meaning in this current time period we are in. Social media as you point will be broken wherever people are because we are the issue, not the technology. We love blaming symptoms and calling them the disease. Until we engage with crafting a solution to our disordered being and society these problems will continue at every level of our society, from our internal dialogues with ourselves to our society writ large.
This is quite a broad statement. Which society are you referring to?
Part of the complication with social media is that it reveals very sharply how many different purposes there are, rather than a singular societal purpose. I'm not sure whether that's a good or a bad thing, or just a thing.
The society you and I are currently a part of. The society in which this social media exists and in which this substack exists. The society in which human beings exist together that is globally connected and interdependent with all of its cross purposes banging up against one another. Is there another one?
I do wonder whether at that macro, global level there will inevitably be too much noise to make sense of much at all. While we're all unified by being on the same planet (and "not killing the planet" could be seen as an emerging common purpose), it's hard for me to see the human species in totality as a singular society.
When I think of 'society' I think of smaller scale: nations, or towns, or neighbourhoods. And that's also where you can start to derive purpose and commonality. At larger scales, you have to switch to broader and vaguer observations, which in turn makes it harder to see 'purpose'.
The spectrum of differences that exist globally between humans I think makes it hard to identify a single society existing in that regard. This is both an amazing thing (makes the world much more interesting!) and a problematic thing (makes it much harder to address global concerns!).
It's something I've always found interesting in science fiction, where there tends to be a shorthand for highly homogenous societies. A planet will have a single climate, with a single society. Makes sense and keeps things simpler dramatically, but it doesn't reflect real-life complexities.
I disagree. Social media, especially Twitter, have terrible structural incentives and algorithms which foster extremism on both sides. I think the solution is not more social media but more human connection. The data is clear on the nasty effects of social media, especially on teens. Tik-Tok is the worst offender. Even a decade ago we weren’t tribal like we are now. Sure, there is a very human element at play here, but to deny the bad incentives is silly.
At first the twitter drama was kind of funny. Everyone was talking about it, and every person I followed here was making an article about it, talking about joining the fediverse (a perfectly viable alternative if you don't mind a little leg work at the door), and now it's nearing a month of this. The articles are rehashing the same things over and over, and frankly I'm sick of hearing about it. I'm unsubscribing from all newsletters that aren't moving on from this.
Maybe next year people can start sharing short stories and talking about writing again.
Twitter was a terrible platform to begin with for anything more than quips, event announcements, and link sharing.
I stopped using Facebook about four years ago, when they moved away from being a useful way of keeping in touch with friends and family. Instagram, more recently, turned into an awkward TikTok imitator, so became less interesting.
Twitter remained most interesting and useful for the longest, but I'd been thinking about reducing my time on it. All the silliness of the last month-or-two was a convenient way to stop using it altogether.
Thing is, I'm not sure I really want a replacement. It does feel like there's a slight hole, that I'll need to find other ways to 'get the word out' - but, honestly, how useful was Twitter to my writing? I'm not sure. Mostly it was me doing micro-blogging ("Just saw this film, it was good/bad/etc") without any real expectation of people seeing or responding.
The idea of starting all over again on a Twitter-like doesn't really appeal. I will miss being able to easily contact creative people - it was very easy to go directly to the source on Twitter. But, then, I'm already doing that in a richer, more rewarding way on Substack.
I'm all for a smaller, deeper, more meaningful set of connections over the 2010s notion of community, I think.
My Twitter experience has been largely positive. I don’t have the fight in me to argue with people online and I curate my surroundings so it’s basically entertainment. I’m not on on it that much to even get too sucked in. People talk a lot about echo chambers but just because I don’t want to hear the opinions of people determined to be obtuse, doesn’t make me closed-minded. I approach social aspects differently now and look for connecting with people who are uplifting. “Don’t you want to be challenged?” No, capitalism does that.
IG is my time suck. It was back when it was for photographers and is today. It’s still just entertainment but I also get inspiration from people and recommendations for books or movies. I even like video content. Anyone wants to fight, please find someone else.
I’ve seen a lot of people returning to tumblr. I haven’t used it in years and didn’t much like the format for blogging. Can’t say I’m interested in the platform.
Im just going to stay here, use whatever tools I think advance my growth and leave it at that.
Who cares about what a bunch of "Woke" employees at Twitter quitting their jobs? These people WERE the social media bullies. They loved the suppression of free speech and banning free thinkers who dared to disagree with the "Woke" agenda. Good for Elon, even if he has to rebuild Twitter from the ground up.
Thanks for the rundown, I'm liking mastodon, didn't find it difficult at all to sign up — but it feels a bit "lonely" in terms of the feed. So far Twitter remains although I'm seeing more **** in my feed too, which I could def do without.
At this point I’m highly critical of any and all social media, regardless of which political side it comes from. In my opinion Twitter became too restrictive of free speech, but also just generally a shit-show. I don’t think we can fix social media, certainly not with more social media. I worry about both political sides in the culture wars trying to restrict the other side from speaking. ‘Hate speech’ keeps getting broadened more and more, which feels creepy and authoritarian to me. You know what we really need? Less online snark and more human connection. Each side thinks they’re 100% ‘right’ and know everything and want to restrict what the other side can say. We need to return to a place where we see each other as fellow human beings, complex and wounded and desirous of being seen, heard and understood. Social media isn’t real life. It’s theatre. This is what love about Substack: So far we’re allowed to think critically, honestly, independently, without worrying about censorship or being bullied. This bullying happens on the far right AND the far left. We need to be realistic and honest about that.
Substack is enough “social media” for me.
Also twitter is likely not going anywhere and the more people write about it and say it is the less likely I think it’s going bye bye. So much noise and so little signal about all of this. I’m amazed at how big of a conversation this Twitter thing is, I could hardly care about what some rich billionaire is doing with a social media outlet.
What's happening with Twitter is crazy. I hope a good, sensible, useable and pleasant way of connecting the world emerges soon.
While I'm on Twitter, I've always been turned off by the amount of anger there.
I quit Twitter a few months ago and don’t miss it. I have a Facebook account still but rarely visit it. Social media was fun in its early years, but eventually, humans ruin most things. And in recent years, all Twitter and Facebook did was depress or infuriate me. My mental health is far better without them. They never did much to grow my writing “career” either. They are mainly just time sucks. Substack is growing organically for me now. I haven’t promoted it since January and my subscriber numbers are growing faster than ever. So good riddance, social media, I say. It’s time for something better.
Thanks, Jackie. This needed saying. I quit Twitter a few months ago. I can’t abide the aggression and controversy. I am still hanging on to Facebook for the moment - though I dislike it more every day.
I am wary of trying other platforms though, given what a train wreck Twitter and Facebook became. I would like to engage more within the Substack space, but to be honest, I find that intimidating and a bit of a task to engage with. I guess I am out of solutions then, and it’s back to the traditional model of the lonely writer scribbling away in her garret?? 😅
Twitter has been part of my media diet for years, but I’m considering cutting back. The last few weeks have been a lot, lol.
I’m considering taking that Twitter time and investing it into my Substack and Discord. I’m also considering experimenting with Tumblr, which has a creative vibe.
At the end of the day, I probably should think about what I want from social media these days and plan from there.
Automattic (the company that owns WordPress.com and Tumblr) said they are interested in hiring people from Twitter. So that could be interesting for the future.
I've never been on social media and I don't care to start now. But the tantrum people are throwing over all this seems petty and probably pointless. I doubt Twitter is going anywhere, whether its most extreme activist users migrate to different platforms or not. Social media is broken in lots of ways, and maybe everyone who uses it should take a deep, long look at the ways they contribute to that brokenness before they start casting stones and looking to reproduce those problems elsewhere.
Our society is disordered and dysfunctional because it lacks a sense of purpose and meaning in this current time period we are in. Social media as you point will be broken wherever people are because we are the issue, not the technology. We love blaming symptoms and calling them the disease. Until we engage with crafting a solution to our disordered being and society these problems will continue at every level of our society, from our internal dialogues with ourselves to our society writ large.
This is quite a broad statement. Which society are you referring to?
Part of the complication with social media is that it reveals very sharply how many different purposes there are, rather than a singular societal purpose. I'm not sure whether that's a good or a bad thing, or just a thing.
The society you and I are currently a part of. The society in which this social media exists and in which this substack exists. The society in which human beings exist together that is globally connected and interdependent with all of its cross purposes banging up against one another. Is there another one?
I do wonder whether at that macro, global level there will inevitably be too much noise to make sense of much at all. While we're all unified by being on the same planet (and "not killing the planet" could be seen as an emerging common purpose), it's hard for me to see the human species in totality as a singular society.
When I think of 'society' I think of smaller scale: nations, or towns, or neighbourhoods. And that's also where you can start to derive purpose and commonality. At larger scales, you have to switch to broader and vaguer observations, which in turn makes it harder to see 'purpose'.
The spectrum of differences that exist globally between humans I think makes it hard to identify a single society existing in that regard. This is both an amazing thing (makes the world much more interesting!) and a problematic thing (makes it much harder to address global concerns!).
It's something I've always found interesting in science fiction, where there tends to be a shorthand for highly homogenous societies. A planet will have a single climate, with a single society. Makes sense and keeps things simpler dramatically, but it doesn't reflect real-life complexities.
I disagree. Social media, especially Twitter, have terrible structural incentives and algorithms which foster extremism on both sides. I think the solution is not more social media but more human connection. The data is clear on the nasty effects of social media, especially on teens. Tik-Tok is the worst offender. Even a decade ago we weren’t tribal like we are now. Sure, there is a very human element at play here, but to deny the bad incentives is silly.
🙌🙌🙌🙌🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
At first the twitter drama was kind of funny. Everyone was talking about it, and every person I followed here was making an article about it, talking about joining the fediverse (a perfectly viable alternative if you don't mind a little leg work at the door), and now it's nearing a month of this. The articles are rehashing the same things over and over, and frankly I'm sick of hearing about it. I'm unsubscribing from all newsletters that aren't moving on from this.
Maybe next year people can start sharing short stories and talking about writing again.
Twitter was a terrible platform to begin with for anything more than quips, event announcements, and link sharing.
🙌🙌
I stopped using Facebook about four years ago, when they moved away from being a useful way of keeping in touch with friends and family. Instagram, more recently, turned into an awkward TikTok imitator, so became less interesting.
Twitter remained most interesting and useful for the longest, but I'd been thinking about reducing my time on it. All the silliness of the last month-or-two was a convenient way to stop using it altogether.
Thing is, I'm not sure I really want a replacement. It does feel like there's a slight hole, that I'll need to find other ways to 'get the word out' - but, honestly, how useful was Twitter to my writing? I'm not sure. Mostly it was me doing micro-blogging ("Just saw this film, it was good/bad/etc") without any real expectation of people seeing or responding.
The idea of starting all over again on a Twitter-like doesn't really appeal. I will miss being able to easily contact creative people - it was very easy to go directly to the source on Twitter. But, then, I'm already doing that in a richer, more rewarding way on Substack.
I'm all for a smaller, deeper, more meaningful set of connections over the 2010s notion of community, I think.
Amen dude 🙏🙏🙌🙌🙌
My Twitter experience has been largely positive. I don’t have the fight in me to argue with people online and I curate my surroundings so it’s basically entertainment. I’m not on on it that much to even get too sucked in. People talk a lot about echo chambers but just because I don’t want to hear the opinions of people determined to be obtuse, doesn’t make me closed-minded. I approach social aspects differently now and look for connecting with people who are uplifting. “Don’t you want to be challenged?” No, capitalism does that.
IG is my time suck. It was back when it was for photographers and is today. It’s still just entertainment but I also get inspiration from people and recommendations for books or movies. I even like video content. Anyone wants to fight, please find someone else.
I’ve seen a lot of people returning to tumblr. I haven’t used it in years and didn’t much like the format for blogging. Can’t say I’m interested in the platform.
Im just going to stay here, use whatever tools I think advance my growth and leave it at that.
Who cares about what a bunch of "Woke" employees at Twitter quitting their jobs? These people WERE the social media bullies. They loved the suppression of free speech and banning free thinkers who dared to disagree with the "Woke" agenda. Good for Elon, even if he has to rebuild Twitter from the ground up.
Exactly.
Thanks for the rundown, I'm liking mastodon, didn't find it difficult at all to sign up — but it feels a bit "lonely" in terms of the feed. So far Twitter remains although I'm seeing more **** in my feed too, which I could def do without.
At this point I’m highly critical of any and all social media, regardless of which political side it comes from. In my opinion Twitter became too restrictive of free speech, but also just generally a shit-show. I don’t think we can fix social media, certainly not with more social media. I worry about both political sides in the culture wars trying to restrict the other side from speaking. ‘Hate speech’ keeps getting broadened more and more, which feels creepy and authoritarian to me. You know what we really need? Less online snark and more human connection. Each side thinks they’re 100% ‘right’ and know everything and want to restrict what the other side can say. We need to return to a place where we see each other as fellow human beings, complex and wounded and desirous of being seen, heard and understood. Social media isn’t real life. It’s theatre. This is what love about Substack: So far we’re allowed to think critically, honestly, independently, without worrying about censorship or being bullied. This bullying happens on the far right AND the far left. We need to be realistic and honest about that.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Look at us now...
It’s definitely weird! Twitter is now Doge/X and a steaming pile of crap, and Substack has their own Twitter.
What a difference a couple months makes! I haven’t even bothered with Twitter. Might delete.