I log in to Twitter maybe once or twice a week now just to see if anyone has tried to reach me via mentions or direct messages. (No-one ever has, leading me to question a bit why I even leave the account open at all.) Whenever I do so, I always happen to catch a quick glimpse of the main timeline, and it never looks like a place I want to be any more.
Whether it's the recent YouTuber drama or whatever sparked some arguments over lewd games this evening, I just don't care any more. It's not worth getting involved in these things, because it takes time away from the thing that is more important to me: enjoying my hobby.
I originally joined Twitter because it was a good place to meet like-minded people and talk about my hobby, but in the last couple of years that aspect has all but vanished. And it's not just from the anger and outrage mobs; also contributing to the overall "noise" level are the endless memes that take something that might have once been enjoyable before squeezing every possible drop of joy out of it by completely oversaturating the timeline with questionable attempts at humour.
A few examples I can think of offhand: I used to like Garfield, The Simpsons and Shrek. Now I never want to see any of them ever again, because the Internet has ruined all of them for me. And it never seems to be in the name of saying anything meaningful; these memes don't mean anything, they're not communicating a message. They're just… I don't know what they are. But they certainly don't add anything to my enjoyment of things.
Since stepping back from Twitter, I suspect permanently this time, I've been struck by how nice it is to be able to just enjoy things. There's no pressure to conform to a popular opinion, or to put people who say stupid things on blast. What, really, does that achieve? You're never going to meet that person and they're never going to change their mind based on what you say, so what, really, is the point?
I get quality interactions with people who are interested in the things I'm interested in through my blog comments, through private chats and through emails. I am in control of those things; I can "switch off" from any of them any time, it's not a looming, constantly present spectre like social media is.
And when I do "switch off" from them, which is frequently, I can just sit back and enjoy something at my own pace. It's lovely.
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