Monday, 7 November 2022

Twitter

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I'm sure no one has been waiting for my take on the current Twitter-pocalypse, but here it is anyway. I've made the decision to delete the app from my phone, I'll no longer be tweeting in a casual sense. I will revert solely to automated tweets that are cross-posted from this very blog. I might dip in on my PC from time to time but I've done that once so far and all the reasons that prompted me to leave actively posting/reading are still valid, so I may not check that often.

TL:DR

So what brought me to this decision? Well, aside from the obvious. I removed the app from my phone last year, or the year before for my own mental well being - I was finding I spent far too much time doom scrolling. Then I gave it another shot and I enjoyed a fair bit of the hobby community and there were various individuals that I was enjoying their tweets and interactions - I mean Duncan Jones - Director of Moon, World of Warcraft and David Bowie's son responded to one of my posts! But the new verification tick thing is really messing with my head because I can't work out if someone is legit or not. I tried muting the words Elon and Musk but even so I'm seeing commentary on him all the time and it's disrupting what I want out of the platform. With folk adding verification ticks or adjusting their name to something else with a tick I can't trust what I'm seeing.

Add to that the recent Spiky Bits, Juan Hidalgo, Army Painter Vallejo drama that everyone piled in on it just feels like an environment I'm no longer comfortable with. It was just relentless, I get why people want to defend themselves and rightly so but it became every other post and now that it's all settled just feels like a huge amount of uproar that should have been resolved in private. Not to mention all the people laid off from their jobs, which is despicable. Folk who know full well that the service is unlikely to be sustainable without their intervention, I expect it'll start to be disrupted soon anyway.

When this first kicked off I saw people ask what platform would they go to and I immediately said back to my blog, not that I'd ever left it, but as old-fashioned as it is it's the place I've always felt most comfortable. I may not have the reach that I did on Twitter, or the many interactions but it's never been about likes or followers for me. I'd rather have a small group of like minded hobbyists willing to come to my blog and play nice than try and communicate with twice as many in the middle of a riot at a bear pit. With no app to keep checking I think it'll be better all round.

What about Mastodon? Some might say. Well that appears to be the front-runner in the replacement. But that usually follows with a description of how it works, with 'federated spaces' moderated by groups on different servers. New terminology to get your head round, it's not beyond me, it's just it seems much more like Reddit than Twitter and I notice NO ONE is suggesting Reddit! I mean I've had fun on there, and if I was bothered about numbers, I've received quite the spike in views when I've posted. But it's not something I've been using for a couple of years now, because it just felt vague and ambiguous. Might not be the best description but that's how I feel. I still use Facebook, although my own hobby Groups are safe spaces I only use my automated blogposts, and sometimes those permissions stop so they may not get cross posted. Instagram? I still find the interface clunky and as mush as I enjoy seeing other peoples content on there, I can't be bothered to keep posting my finished gallery of TO DONEs as I intended to.

So, I really don't need to adopt a new platform at the moment, I'm happy right here. I'm sure I'm going to miss out on a lot of things but right now I'm better off isolating myself from it, or at least for as long as I can go cold-turkey. Who knows, it's addictive, I might not be able to stand it and need to randomly tweet again real soon. But for now, I'm taking a break.

2 comments:

  1. I think because I am not reaching many people on Twitter, my stream is actually pretty clean of that junk. The couple of people I follow are all pretty chill. you will always be welcome on MeWe is you ever feel like trying another platform. I am an admin in the 40K group; our lack of patience for bollocks has built a pretty good community ;-)

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    1. Glad you found a decent space. I dip in and out of twitter now and I'm frequently reminded that I'm better of without it but do miss some of the other interactions with some comedians and the likes of Rahul Kohli. I stay just long enough to see what they're up to and then scuttle off again.

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