ok so like... i get worried about leaving twitter or it falling apart because it's been my main source of ~Online Engagement~ for plugging my art and my cool things i do and my various crowdfund efforts. for years now that's been the case. but then i read some stuff about internal twitter reporting:
Twitter is struggling to keep its most active users - who are vital to the business - engaged... These "heavy tweeters" account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been in "absolute decline" since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled 'Where did the Tweeters Go?'
A 'heavy tweeter' is defined as someone who logs in to Twitter six or seven days a week and tweets about three to four times a week, the document said.
really? that's the criteria for a heavy tweeter?? that's nothing compared to the importance of this shit i've got built up in my head. i hate being on twitter but i used to tell myself it was worth it for like, the exposure or whatever. what exposure?? barely anyone's using it lol. i used to enjoy it, met some great people there, but now i don't. seems like i'm not alone
it's always been a bit of a cesspool but it didn't used to be this bad. and now people are finally getting sick of it. but now i don't have to worry about it since it seems like twitter wasn't that huge of a deal anyway.
i'm realizing now that word of mouth has always gotten me further than any tweet i ever made. luckily that works on all platforms
I think about this so much. There is this pervasive idea of like, "oh my twitter following is my health insurance" and just! those are tenuous bonds!! and the tools needed to get/uphold those bonds are designed to interfere with the process of building connections that will actually keep someone safe and alive. since I stopped using twitter and live blogging my life I have found myself actually talking to my friends what a wild concept!
The thing that made me snap was realizing how often I'd tell a loved one something really exciting only for them to go "oh yeah I saw on twitter!" and the conversation ending there, and realizing how crushing and empty that felt.
Twitter makes socializing easy and empty. Sitting in a room with dozens of people talking to nobody is not the way to build connections and bonds, it's a way to feel alone despite not being alone. And once an easy route appears you loose the muscles needed for doing the difficult messy work to actually get where you need to go
"social media allows you to tell a story to everyone you know exactly once instead of retelling it to every person individually" was never a feature, it was always a bug
literally because lyn isn't on twitter when we hang out "catching up" is an actual enjoyable social activity and not something that last five seconds. it's actually a really good time.
