Vernon

My closest friends are my friends because of Twitter. It has impacted my life in positive ways despite all of its historic problems.

i was really into twitter when i was younger that is for sure. it was (kinda) fun on there due to the fact that people can quickly post things and i could easily meet people there.

i only really have an account still due to the fact that there's still quite a few people i know on there that are still decently active or i don't know if they're on other sites or not.

though i'll definitely be happy to leave fully whenever the thing fully kicks the bucket or i'm somehow suspended for whatever new rule Musky makes.

As someone who made a lot of close friends on twitter, it was hard for me to finally leave. I think we'll all be better off without the toxic behavior that it breeds, but I wish it didn't have to be like this.

Your story is not uncommon. In my case, I got on in June 2007 but didn't really fully get the place and its potential until around 2010. As for how it is ending, I can't think of anything better than your words of bizarre and sad. Aside from my personal feelings about having to now be on multiple platforms to make up what I lost in friends, fun, and information, perhaps worst of all is how Tesla Trump has damaged if not completely wrecked how probably tens of thousands of people legitimately promote themselves to generate their income.

I'd actually like to stop talking about Twitter but, damn, it's hard when it was such a part of multiple facets of my life for over 15 years. I just hope in 15 more years, you'll still be driving a very successful cohost and we'll be able to laugh about Twitter then the way we do things like GeoCities now.

Twitter, for all it’s issues, also exposed me to people and ideas I may never have encountered otherwise. Connecting with trans folks on Twitter absolutely helped me come to terms with my own issues around gender dysphoria and I’ll be eternally grateful for that.

I’m having to explore alternative ways of interacting with Twitter while the API is shut off and it sucks ass. If this is how it’s going to be then I might be done with it.

big ol' same. but it's also a drug I would not mind being forced to quit. but obviously there are other sources of Posts. I don't know. so much irreparable damage to everything

Absolutely feeling these same vibes, I remember when Twitter was external image hosts and retweeting something by copy and pasting a tweet with "RT" infront of it.

A little while ago I downloaded my archive and skimread across the years and it's a low key fascinating look into my development as a person over the years. I've met some amazing friends, lovers, partners and everything inbetween thanks to that site.

I know that this is trite but seeing it circle the drain is genuine "End of an era" stuff for me and It's ultimately going to cost me friendships when it finally goes offline.

It's genuinely wild how this whole mess has unfolded. It almost feels like a game I worked on called Hypnospace Outlaw. It honestly is stranger than fiction.

I met tons of other FFXIV players via Twitter. Unfortunately, the Tumblr exodus and a new expansion made it unbearable. Now the site's just crumbling along with all the memories we made on there. Sucks. /shrug

yeah i have similar feelings. that platform had such a positive influence on my career. it expanded my world. connected me with remarkable people.

but also, it had a demonstrably negative effect on my focus, reading habits, and screen time. working on fixing that now.

The more I think about it, weighing all the good that has been accomplished through Twitter, I think it's also fair to keep in mind the damage it has caused as well. Seeing what it has grown to become over the years, even knowing that it provides an avenue for audience, growth, community, outreach, and networking for individuals who may not have easy access for any of those, I think its death will be a net positive on the world.

The niche and need for social networking will never vanish, but I think it's many years too late for Twitter to really fix the parts about it that have cultivated a toxic environment as a whole. At the end of the day it's a platform that uses outrage and controversy as its fuel.

But, as I said, the niche and need won't disappear. The death of a major platform gives rise and opportunity for something better to fill that need, and create something with a far more positive impact on people as whole. I'm not saying Cohost will be that for everyone, but just as an example for me it's been a far better social media experience entirely, and every time I interact on here I notice how much better it feels for me, and I can imagine it would be better for others I interact with as well.

I'm low on the Coherent juice today, but this and your other chost put into words a lot of how I feel, too. I can't say that I loved twitter, it was/is full of problems, but... I made friends and discovered good people there, too. And so many people depend on its instant and far-reaching nature to survive. It really, really sucks to see it wither away like this... I wish it weren't so.

It's very bittersweet. I already miss it, yet I'll be glad when it's gone.

I find it most interesting when looking at the overall industry landscape. You have Twitter becoming a parody of itself (all to stop a popular place where people are routinely mean to billionaires, like Thiel's Gawker lawsuits), sure. But you also have Facebook imploding because Zuckerberg wants to walk around without legs. You have the various right-wing sites apparently on sale 24/7...except for Minds, which researchers have been using for de-radicalization research. You have GitHub using everybody's code to train an AI that they won't stop begging people to pay for. And I assume that there's some Google executive kicking himself, because they literally could've done anything with Google+ and would've looked like the least-stupid big network.

It might just be time for the ad-supported networks to just go away, since they only work if you can sustain having users make each other angry.

Also, it's one of the last major social sites where nsfw is just allowed. I don't know where else to find so many different artists if twitter goes tits up.

i'm the wife