Done with Twitter

On 15th February comedian, writer and broadcaster Stephen Fry announced he was done with Twitter as “too many people have peed in the pool“.

After reading his article I sat back and thought about everything he said and was motivated to do the same.  Twitter does nothing for me, and hasn’t for some time.  I find it awkward to use, of little use, a little self indulgent (much like this blog) and quite honestly, as I always have found it, crap.

I got on the bandwagon because it was something everyone else was doing and it felt like I was missing out, but as a colleague said to me recently, it had become “another beast that needs feeding”.  He’s right I think.  If you want to use it effectively, you need to use it all of the time and tweet often through the day in order to build your following.  (Why do you want a following by the way?  Always wondered that.  This blog is an outlet for my rants.  I couldn’t give a shit if anyone reads it or not.)   The problem with that of course is that as Stephen Fry discovered, you’re likely to say something that people take issue with and then sooner or later you’re Twitter feed becomes a hatefest.  The alternative is to moderate your speech, but what’s the point in that?  If you can’t say what you truly believe then why say anything?  And anyway, I can say very little of any importance in 140 characters or less.

I’ve already said that I’m about done with Facebook.  Only my kids insistence on Facebook Messenger keeps me there, and if I can get them to drop that I’ll be done with Facebook too.  They’re only flogging my profile information to the US government anyway.

Which brings me back to Twitter, who were probably doing the same.  Done with it.  Not bothering any more.  Byeeeeee.