Leaving twitter
And my social media footprint shrinks; I’ve closed my twitter account, mostly ‘cos there’s very little left there to read. Yesterday there were only 5 or 6 new posts on the “Following” feed (I never used the algorithmic feed); 90% of the likes my posts got were bots. It really was the text equivalent of a post-apocalyptic wasteland with howling winds.
I had always been careful about what accounts I followed, so the extreme views that are reportedly on that platform rarely impinged on my consciousness; on the occasions I did click on a tweet it became clear that many of the replies were bots and misinformation or just plain hatred (“never read the comments!”), so I rarely did that.
Social media history
I guess I’ve been on some form of social media (before it was ever called that) since 1987, when I gained access to Usenet, mailing lists, and (heh) online JANet BBS systems (Bradford UNaXcess, anyone?).
I remember the rush to LiveJournal when that started and then the mass exodus when it got sold to Russia. LJ was great in that it was a central place where pretty much everyone posted.
With the exodus came fragmentation; some people went to Dreamwidth, some to Facebook, some to their own blogs.
And that’s where I started to get tired of trying to keep up with people; some accounts I used to read on LJ fell off my radar (especially those who went to Facebook; I was never on that platform, never felt the need) and eventually became forgotten in the mists of time.
Twitter had its own “everyone there” vibe, but now it’s tumbleweed city with everyone scattered to diverse platforms.
And I don’t have the enthusiasm to start again on a new platform and then hunt down all the people I used to follow and…
It’s just not worth the effort!
Where am I now?
I’m trying to think what social media accounts I have left. Hmmm… Dreamwidth (which is pretty much just there to act as an RSS reader), LinkedIn, and… err. Does Reddit or Unix StackExchange count?
And there’s this blog, of course, but that’s not really social media.
How to contact me
For the few people who used to use twitter DMs to contact me, you probably have my mobile number and can text me (I don’t have encrypted messenger apps)… or you can find my email address on the About Me page!
So after almost 38 years of online activity my presence is shrinking and is now mostly this poorly maintained blog!