sadteaparty

probably still getting by.

i hope you're well.



erica
@erica

god going from multiple feeds that have like 8-10 posts each that are separated by accounts /interests/purposes to just one feed that fits like sorta 3 posts-ish at once because i used an extension to make everything as small as possible on my 1440p screen fucking sucks so fucking much

i said it in reply to a friend yesterday but this truly feels like the worst breakup i've ever been through. it's so hard to let go. i spent like 14 years of my life there, man ! it feels like i'm packing my shit but doing it one box every day because it's so grueling to think about leaving in the first place.

i want to be upset at people going to places like Bluesky or whatever but i can't. i get it. if they can manage it, that's fine. if they think that place is better than that's on them to deal with the eventual blowback. i'm just sad that like, the way i took in the world for a third of my life is essentially over because now it's broken apart across multiple websites in a way that isn't good and extremely inconvenient.


sadteaparty
@sadteaparty

This post hit me and got me to think about how twitter actually fit into my life, and for some reason compelled to post, if just to exorcise a thought. I'm not a Poster, or a social media user much in general, I've been carrying around the same online friend groups for decades and my social media use has been almost entirely passive. In spite of being extremely online I'm mostly a digital hermit. Not going to make any excuses for twitter or the damages it has caused, and the damage of The Algorithm and social media behavior in general, but it did one really specific thing that did a lot for me for a lot of years.


The analogy that finally made sense to me is that twitter was basically me going and eating at a mall food court. I'd go there to get a specific thing, and then just sit down in the middle of seemingly infinite people, and watch them go by, and it was a distant, but shared sort of humanity that I always found soothing. You know. When malls still existed.

Specifically tweetdeck and its precursors were really what changed things for me. I'd just keep it up on a side monitor, with several columns of just... things. Noise. While I certainly got my fair share of bad news through twitter, and it's probably directly responsible for the radicalization of my politics in a lot of ways, I mostly just used to to find and follow people who were passionate about things they did. Art, music, game development, writing, some fandom spaces. I'd just keep several columns up, and glance at it throughout the day, and just be reminded of people moving, and living, and doing the things they were into.

And it is so global, even in its semi-broken state! It was always a joy whenever some funny game thing happened and you'd see it trickle through multiple countries over time, or watching fanart trends spill back and forth around the world. I spent so much money on assorted gumroads and bandcamps and whatever, being led into things I'd have never known existed. Its really singular in that way. Social media isn't going to die, but if twitter completely folds it'll definitely be a reversion to the old status quo of way more isolated groups. That cross-pollination is going to be lost. My ability to follow it already is, even if it persists.

But it's weird, the simple loss of all those columns and that ability to control the tone of each ones conversation, and follow each one in a kind of thematic way, basically just makes twitter so much less usable now. To put all that into a single feed just creates raw chaos and noise, too much is lost. It's not a mall food court any more, it's a packed stadium, and you can't follow what any group is doing in any real way. Tabbing through a bunch of list windows isn't going to recreate it, that friction is killer. Out of sight, out of mind.

Trimmed down, one timeline still functions as one of those columns, sure. But so does Cohost, and it's way nicer here. But I'm going to miss the noise of the globe tremendously. It's a really singular thing, and I don't think we're getting it back from twitter, and I'm not sure anybody else is dumb enough to build a new twitter, nor am I sure at the end of the day if its a good idea to begin with. Yet I'll miss it just the same.


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in reply to @erica's post:

yeah, like... this is totally unusable. can't do it. that's it

it feels ridiculous to be grieving it like this but it truly is just the end of an era. that part is extremely real! whatever era comes next is gonna be a meaningfully big difference in my life. that's real!

reminds me of changing schools when i was a teenager. like, yeah i could conceivably keep up with some of my old classmates but realistically i was never gonna see them again

yeah since the implosion happened over a holiday this is my first Work Day without tweetdeck on a side monitor, and it’s like…. really genuinely fucking depressing! Just sitting here by myself staring at my work laptop like shit it’s lonely in here

I hate it I hate how everything has been blown apart I’ve actually felt really depressed over this whole situation a lot. I’m gonna lose out on mutuals and connections with people all over the place and it’s gonna suck. I am trying to make it work but rn my energy levels for managing any new media spaces is quite low, but I’ve been trying to just stop being stubborn and give some attention to places more and accept reality.

Like yeah Twitter sucks, but I’ve met a lot of people through it and I met the love of my life on there. Hard to let go a little.

Struggling to accept how many social media accounts I'm going to have to deal with for at least the near future... I mean, even with the fediverse I'm expecting to end up with at least a few due to defederation and compatibility issues and whatnot.

Like I've accepted we'll never have the One Site like Twitter was probably ever again but speedrunning learning 20 sites in one month to decide if I want to follow people onto them is so exhausting.

I felt the same way as a Tumblr v1 user... watching it go up in flames was surreal and depressing. I don't have the same attachment to twitter (just never used it in my younger years) — but it's still where my community is, and watching everyone split to bsky/threads is frustrating. I keep talking about cohost but almost no one listens...