No more twitter

Back when twitter rolled out 280 characters to everyone, I realized I'd had enough. It wasn't just the doubling of the character limit, that was more of a coincidence. That change was an inflection point for me. It was also right around when the outrage du jour was that some nazi got verified. I don't recall the specifics and they don't matter. I told myself that it was time to stop directly going to Twitter. This was back in early November of last year.

It's been a few months, and I still end up on twitter once in a while (primarily from links I click on belong.io) but I don't use any twitter clients and don't go to twitter.com on my own. I don't miss it and my gut tells me I'm better off without it. Without the distraction and time-suck, I have more time decompress, more time for thoughts to develop as opposed to constantly reaching for and craving more more more. I feel more put together. My current view on twitter, after distancing myself from it, is that if consumed regularly and at length, it is too much to handle in a healthy way. At least with the timeline I'd built, so that's why I quit.

In the months since abstaining from twitter, not a week goes by that I don't see someone else pontificating on the perils of social sites. The latest to get my attention is a piece in The New York Times. The salient lines:

If something really big happens, you will find out.

and:

I began to see it wasn’t newspapers that were so great, but social media that was so bad.

I couldn't agree more with those statements. So add me to the pile of people telling you to get off social media: stop using big social media sites, you'll be better for it in the long run.