The Surprise Bonus of Quitting My "Job" at Twitter

Choosing a different own abyss to shout into

I don’t have any strong opinions about Elon Musk. In my heart, I knew that Twitter would eventually become a cesspool, but that’s not why I’ve stopped playing. The deciding factor was the recent admission that Twitter would be openly pay-to-play, rather than continuing the lie that engagement could be earned.

If I’m honest, I never got much engagement on the platform. I have 817 followers and have tweeted more than 21,400 times over the last 14 years. I think my single-Tweet likes record is 12 or so. For context, the bulk of them have been about the Delmarva Peninsula as opposed to about celebrities or politicians or hot-takes on issues or owning anyone on anything.

For people like me, there’s a hostage-taking aspect of Twitter, a primal fear that publishers or even editors check your follower count to make sure you have an audience to bring to the table (I was fortunate that my publisher didn’t think that way).

Still, it’s a specter; a sickness on the writer’s part that believes spending enough energy on Twitter (or Facebook, etc.) being clever, informative or engaging can help move the needle for their work.

Don’t get me wrong. It was true for a while, but it isn’t anymore. As I decided about Facebook earlier this year, the amount of free writing I have to do to get noticed isn’t worth it, and it doesn’t move the needle.

MID-TEXT ADDENDUM: I woke up to this today. It’s an open letter to Facebook from a major investor. In part, it says this:

Meta needs to re-build confidence with investors, employees and the tech community in order to attract, inspire, and retain the best people in the world. In short, Meta needs to get fit and focused.

There’s no mention of the users or even customers. I initially had written “The users are suspiciously missing” but there’s nothing suspicious about it. The people who make things on or for social media are the product, not the consumer. Commodities investors don’t talk about what’s best for the cows.

I’d rather write for you. You read and respond. I never feel as if I’m shouting into the abyss here.

I don’t want to rehash what’s wrong with social media, though. I want to talk about what I’ve noticed since I stopped posting to Twitter: I tend to think in terms of Tweets.

Like some deranged poet, I still try distilling larger thoughts to their 280-character essence. How bananas is that?

Having noticed, though, I looked back even further at my social media adventure and realized I stopped taking photos when I stopped using Instagram. It was as if knowing that I wasn’t going to have anywhere to “share” the photo undermined my enjoyment of taking it. Again: How insane is it to consider the platform rather than the idea?

Maybe it’s only a little insane. The appeal of social media for me always has been the opportunity to share what I was already doing with more people. It just took me too long to notice that I had flipped it, that I was making stuff to share rather than sharing stuff I made. And that’s really the key.

If you’re one of the people who got here by following a link, you’re owed an explanation. I’ve gone back to the basics and am breaking the first rule of social media.

Prevailing wisdom is that one has to go on and comment and share things to “really” get engagement. Nearly 15 years later, it’s time to admit that that doesn’t work for me. Over the last few weeks, the number of people who followed social media links to my stories hasn’t changed even though I post or like nothing else.

So first, if you’ve clicked through from someplace, Thank You. Second, consider subscribing so you don’t have to rely on the algorithm to tell you when I’ve written something. The fact that you guys read means I put everything here.

I’ll admit to building my own abyss to shout into on Substack. There’s a chat function that only works with the app. I’ve begun posting there just for the sake of it. I think of it as my story-development page. As I mentioned last time, I think it’s a lot to ask you to add another app to your phone, but if you subscribe to a few Substacks, it might be worth your time.

I’ve also started using Medium as it was originally intended, a space for shortform writing. So far I’ve written about my wife’s murder sponge and the dangers of getting nostalgic in a junk shop. You also can subscribe to my Medium feed if you like, but I always share everything I write here anyway.

Keep the Faith,

Tony

Postscript

Some updates.

I wrote a couple weeks ago about memorial tattoos and taxidermied pets. I thought you might get a kick out of this (mildly graphic) taxidermied pets story.

The first time I ever got drunk was behind a graveyard in Keyport, N.J. It has been considered abandoned despite the fact that it has plenty of operating cash and volunteers coming to keep up the grounds. I do not miss the pettiness of local politics.

Here’s an example of my Substack chat turning into a story idea: