RIP Twitter

A sad goodbye to a weird and wonderful place

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

Twitter is dying and everyone knows it. There wasn’t much #Caturday yesterday, and today’s #FlowerReport is buried. The poets and the funny people, the food and the art are quickly being replaced by bros cheering an idiot billionaire with compensation issues. It’s like I was in the cool room and then the fools rushed in.

Fools were always there, of course, but you could avoid them. I avoided them for eight years(!) and it wasn’t even hard. I’m an under-the-radar middle-aged writer with a handful of followers. Nobody bothers me, it’s great. My feed was filled with other writers, agents, editors, artists, musicians, comics, scholars, teachers, scientists, gardeners, cooks, journalists, activists, etc. Also, a lot of supposed “nobodies” who aren’t defined by their vocations, but love books, food, art, and joy. The cool people. It was fun to side-eye and ridicule the fools with my “friends,” but mostly it was just good chatter.

Now, suddenly, it’s a feed of fools. I never cared about the tech side of Twitter and don’t follow anyone who talks about it. But tech bros are all over my feed now, mansplaining the Twitlord’s agenda. At least Valerie Bertinelli is doing the good work.

Other unlikely celebrities have been surprisingly fun on Twitter. Who knew that Axl Rose would have such incisive political opinions? Steve Martin’s banjo helped us through the pandemic. Dolly and Dionne forever.

I have had such fun on the bird app. I’ve found snail mail penpals, fabulous book recs, great recipes. A treasure trove of art, cat pics, and flowers. It has brightened my mood, connected me to like minds, and talked me off ledges. It has explained the inexplicable to me and encouraged my own activism. Even when I was madly refreshing to keep my finger on the pulse of BREAKING NEWS, I was glad for the outlet and the input. It helped tame the anxieties of dark times. I spoke truth to abhorrent power (even if power couldn’t hear) and joined actions that felt important. It gave me agency, of a sort.

It’s also been a great place as a writer. I found readers and other writers, places to submit, things to aspire to. I took part in #PitMad and followed agents with great advice. I received a few private messages about wonderful…