Twitter HQ building from the bike lane of Market Street in San Francisco on Thursday, 27 October 2022, the analog clock under the Twitter sign reading approximately 9:20 a.m.
The more I learn, the less I know. As I get older, this becomes more and more true. But why am I starting this post with so much uncertainty? Well, of the few facts that I do know, two include:
We never know what is coming next
Nothing is guaranteed.
As we approach the ass-end of 2022, I sit here thinking a lot about my former employer. And some of my favorite colleagues. And a community I loved. All of it, however, is no more. Now, this isn’t going to be a long Why I Left Twitter rant, but the fact is I cannot continue to use a product that is going to put even one more penny into the pocket of a megalomaniacal billionaire (or a murderous sovereign kingdom, for that matter). But to be honest, I’m having a really hard time quitting Twitter.
I’m pretty sure there is an amount of withdrawal involved. There’s no place to put the random thoughts in my head any more. Well, that’s not quite right, now, is it? I mean just look at this seemingly haphazard collection of letters and punctuation. I put all these here without much problem, didn’t I? What I guess I’m really missing — if I’m honest with myself — is the attention my Tweets were able to garner.
I joined Twitter in 2007. Sooner than most, but not as early as some of the people I admired. Which was really why I was there. And because it was in its nascent stage, I got to carefully select which accounts I wanted to follow, creating an experience that was perfect for me: mostly news, some humor, and hyper-local information. As the platform grew and evolved, so did the number of people I followed. To keep myself from getting overwhelmed, I came up with my own Dunbar’s number for accounts I followed: 666. Once I hit that number, new follows worked just like club capacity, one in, one out.
The details of who I followed and the types of accounts I added over the years should be the theme of a future post. For now, I just want to focus on my emotional response to Twitter’s new reality. In a word, crushed.
As I may have mentioned before, it feels like I’ve lost a friend. I know that’s not actually true, but in some respects I have. There are people I’ve grown close to on Twitter who I’ve never met in person. Yet, we’ve now known each other for years. I have no idea how I’ll be able to maintain those relationships now. There’s a real last day of high school feeling to this. You intend to keep in touch over the summer, and promise you’ll see each other on holiday breaks from college, but life moves on, you move on, and before you know it you’re getting an invite for a high school reunion you don’t want to go to because you have no idea if your best friend in high school will even recognize you in the person you’ve become.
Look, the coherent thoughts about The Future of Twitter™ are for another day. Today, as more and more of my former teammates either leave or get pushed out, I’m just at a real loss for anything close to a pithy estimation of the whys and hows each 280-character product roadmap are doomed to fail. But I wanted to do something with all this nervous angst. So it all landed here. Instead of a ridiculously rambling Tweet thread.
Mind Riot
01 November 2022
Twitter HQ building from the bike lane of Market Street in San Francisco on Thursday, 27 October 2022, the analog clock under the Twitter sign reading approximately 9:20 a.m.
The more I learn, the less I know. As I get older, this becomes more and more true. But why am I starting this post with so much uncertainty? Well, of the few facts that I do know, two include:
We never know what is coming next
Nothing is guaranteed.
As we approach the ass-end of 2022, I sit here thinking a lot about my former employer. And some of my favorite colleagues. And a community I loved. All of it, however, is no more. Now, this isn’t going to be a long Why I Left Twitter rant, but the fact is I cannot continue to use a product that is going to put even one more penny into the pocket of a megalomaniacal billionaire (or a murderous sovereign kingdom, for that matter). But to be honest, I’m having a really hard time quitting Twitter.
I’m pretty sure there is an amount of withdrawal involved. There’s no place to put the random thoughts in my head any more. Well, that’s not quite right, now, is it? I mean just look at this seemingly haphazard collection of letters and punctuation. I put all these here without much problem, didn’t I? What I guess I’m really missing — if I’m honest with myself — is the attention my Tweets were able to garner.
I joined Twitter in 2007. Sooner than most, but not as early as some of the people I admired. Which was really why I was there. And because it was in its nascent stage, I got to carefully select which accounts I wanted to follow, creating an experience that was perfect for me: mostly news, some humor, and hyper-local information. As the platform grew and evolved, so did the number of people I followed. To keep myself from getting overwhelmed, I came up with my own Dunbar’s number for accounts I followed: 666. Once I hit that number, new follows worked just like club capacity, one in, one out.
The details of who I followed and the types of accounts I added over the years should be the theme of a future post. For now, I just want to focus on my emotional response to Twitter’s new reality. In a word, crushed.
As I may have mentioned before, it feels like I’ve lost a friend. I know that’s not actually true, but in some respects I have. There are people I’ve grown close to on Twitter who I’ve never met in person. Yet, we’ve now known each other for years. I have no idea how I’ll be able to maintain those relationships now. There’s a real last day of high school feeling to this. You intend to keep in touch over the summer, and promise you’ll see each other on holiday breaks from college, but life moves on, you move on, and before you know it you’re getting an invite for a high school reunion you don’t want to go to because you have no idea if your best friend in high school will even recognize you in the person you’ve become.
Look, the coherent thoughts about The Future of Twitter™ are for another day. Today, as more and more of my former teammates either leave or get pushed out, I’m just at a real loss for anything close to a pithy estimation of the whys and hows each 280-character product roadmap are doomed to fail. But I wanted to do something with all this nervous angst. So it all landed here. Instead of a ridiculously rambling Tweet thread.
See you tomorrow?