Cleaning Digital Footprint & Declutter my Digital Life — Part I — Closing Twitter Account
I have been using Twitter for years. Literally.
When I started, there were quite a few limitations that helped to filter trolls and not-so-smart people. We had restrictions on 140 characters which also included mentions. Inherently Twitter was a community where only people knew what to say and HOW to say it precisely, concise and straight.
In meanwhile, Twitter decided to extend the maximum number of characters to 280. After that, mentions of users were excluded from character numbers. Even more, Twitter enabled us to connect several twitts into series and make it possible that anybody can use it without limitations.
I am not saying that Twitter should be a social network reserved for a small number of people with enough mind power to tell something clear in 140 characters. Quite the opposite, it should enable everyone to use it, but the consequences are just terrible.
Instead of having a good network of intelligent people, Twitter started to look more like other social networks (hi, Mr. Zuckerberg). And many people I had a conversation with just left because of unpolite, uneducated, and stupid people that start bringing some strange ideas and arguments as they are enabled to write whatever, from weird Flat Earth ideas to 5G dangers.
I am trying very hard here not to be elitist (I am a mathematician, by the way) but just put myself in the position of a regular user who used to enjoy clear and pleasant discussions there.
Twitter became a different place. I started to feel insecure with many attacks on me from people I should not care about in real life. But there they are. And no matter how I tried, I was always involved in different discussions leading nowhere — pure, essential waste of time.
At the same time, I start considering decluttering my life from digital garbage and cleaning it from the discussion without purpose (by that, I am not talking only of Twitter).
After ten years and dozens of thousands of tweets, I just decided to stop. Not step by step trying to be less involved but stop that for good.
I sent some private messages three days ago to some people I wish to stay in my life (dozens of them get back with notes and sharing _ personal_ information on how to get to them in real life).
Pages and pages of digital text are gone. I clearly remember one single twitt that got a reach of about half of a million people. It was about my alcoholism.
Will I miss Twitter? I am missing it for a year now. It is not what it used to be. Eventually, I will have more time for other activities. And that is quite a drive for me. I am doing and writing something with purpose, not explaining idiots obvious things. It was a mistake even to start. Should I close my account earlier? I will never know. Probably. Will I miss it? No, I will not.
