I Quit Twitter and It Feels Great

Can strongly recommend.

 

I quit last March after a Trump supporter said some vile things about a picture of my then 6-month-old son. I don’t miss it at all, and I used to be addicted to documenting everything I did on tour and everywhere I travelled. It’s not worth it for their awful policies and the disgusting shit people are allowed to get away with.

 

recently got rid of all social media on my phone. im trying to only check it when im on a computer. been great so far. i dont miss it at all.

 

Twitter is pretty much the only thing I use, and Chorus forums. I only scroll Twitter when I'm super bored tho. If I look every day I get too depressed and demoralized from all the of the political things that make me wanna die

 

Twitter is basically a running thread of my internal monologue, and it just got to be too much.

 

I quit Facebook after the election. I have to promote my art and my music on there, but I have ways of posting without ever going on Facebook.

I cannot stress enough how much better my mental health has gotten since quitting Facebook. It’s an addiction, it alters your personality in real life, makes you hostile and volatile and makes you feel empty.

I don’t do Twitter, personally I’ve never understood the appeal. I don’t do Instagram so Facebook was my vice that I’m happy to say I was able to rid myself of.

I know it may be hard, but people please give it a chance and delete those apps or at least download an app that only lets you spend a certain amount of time per day on the site. You will be a better person.

Xoxo love

 

#firstworldproblems. But really, you can choose who to follow, not like you are forced to do anything. I can understand that this may be a problem to those who are working in journalism but otherwise, when regular people complain about the social media, it just sounds strange.

I only use Facebook/Twitter to check the updates from my favorite bands. On Facebook I don't even check the regular news feed because I know, that the content could make me nervous.

 

I think being the UK is good, as I rarely see too much polarising political content on twitter. It's mostly stupid memes and jokes. and I made sure I only follow people I care about whose opinions I either (at least slightly) agree with, or put them in a way I can at least understand and doesn't feel provocative..

 

But how will I get long-winded golf play-by-plays from Norm MacDonald?!

 

I use Twitter for one thing, fantasy football. I follow all the 'experts' and all to get updates leading up to games. I find it really useful for that.

I unfollowed everything that wasn't football related after a few months of realizing what a crapshoot it was.

 

Why I use twitter too. My feed consists of music basically. I’ve met some awesome people on twitter through vinyl collecting and music. Most have total control of what they see I think. If you’re gonna follow political people your feed will be filled with that kind of stuff. I rarely see political stuff on twitter. The occasional rant or retweet but nothing more.

 

Never had a twitter account - figured there are very few people/brands I'd care to have a constant short-form feed from.

None of the feedback I've heard about the platform in the last few years has really forced me to reconsider my position.

 

I definitely think Twitter is about who you follow. My feed is mostly hockey, soccer, and music folks. My feed rarely gets political and when it does it's usually someone retweeting something that's kinda funny anyway.

 

The argument about Twitter being viable if you stay away from politics/news doesn't entirely hold water. Some of my favorite accounts to follow were directors like Edgar Wright and Brad Bird, Sergio Vega from Deftones and other artists of the sort, and still it became too much to deal with when many of them spent a good deal of time posting and retweeting about the awful shit that was happening in the early months of 2017. And this is considering I agreed with everything they had to say. Athletes and sports-related accounts tend to play it safe, but the entire platform became compromised for me when I realized I had to actually pick and choose which artists I wanted to follow based on the potential for volatile exchanges. And God forbid I decided to step in and reply to someone saying something especially harsh. That place is broken as fuck.

 

Not at the point where I want to discontinue use entirely, however I did a massive cleanup of friends and followers on both Facebook and Twitter, unfollowed a lot of news accounts and put filters and mutes on tons of things and even that had been a significant change in happiness. Sometimes I feel out of the loop but not knowing about the latest school shooting concerns me a whole lot less than how I felt getting “news” thrown at my face every 10 seconds. Mostly use it for music updates and to stay in touch with old acquaintances.

 

I don't understand why people need to make grandiose gestures of "quitting" social media. Unless you're horribly addicted, just turn off notifications and check it when you feel like it.

EDIT 2018-02-08: I posted this comment without having read the article. Then, I posted a reply after having read the article twice but missing that it was a female writer which completely changes the perspective in regards to this topic. Hence, I'm stupid and should know better than to try and participate in a community while at work when I don't have sufficient time to actually understand what I'm posting about.

 

everything these days has to be a think piece

 

I mean, did you read this?

 

The main thing stopping me from quitting Twitter is that I feel like I'll be more in the dark and uninformed than I ever was. Like the 2016 election, most of us were straight up unaware of how many vile people are out there and now it's all coming out. The human garbage is exhausting to deal with, and sometimes soul crushing, but I feel like I need to be strong and allow myself to view it so that I don't become complacent. Sometimes we need reminders of what we don't want to become. It's definitely a fine line to walk between acknowledgment and normalization though. Never let it be normalized.

 

I’ve been trying to ween myself of social media. Deleted Snapchat, barely use instagram/facebook. Twitter I only use for news.

 

Coincidentally just deleted my Twitter this morning. As of this week I now have no social media accounts at all.

I mainly held onto them in order to promote my music, but I’m taking a step back from that so it felt like the right time to disconnect.

I’m still unsure how one promotes these days without social media. I’ll try to figure it out. It does feel good to not have that stuff hanging over my head though. I put too much emotional stock in it, and found myself becoming too invested.

 

Maybe you would understand better if you read the piece.

 

i can't get rid of twitter i have 20 accounts i'm addicted

 

One question I've had is do we, collectively, search for or create an alternative platform or just abandon this idea all together - especially since it seems these social media companies have such a hard time getting the easiest things right. I don't think twitter is going anywhere, but if enough of the people who actually made it worthwhile leave I could see something else rising up to fill that niche. I personally don't use it, but it's so pervasive throughout the internet it's impossible to not be affected by it on some level.