I made friends there I still talk with daily.

I met the people who would become my editors, which is how I built my career.

I felt a sense of community with other internet weirdos around the world.

It’s a major part of why I am who I am today.

And I haven’t used it in two years.

In 2022 Iquiet-quit Twitter.

Other than that, though, I’m gone.

I don’t scroll, I don’t reply, and I don’t see ads.

I’ll share what I was thinking before I left; maybe it will help you decide.

I’ll also talk about where I’ve found community online since leaving.

The collective mourning for Twitter at the festival was palpable.

There are so many beautiful projects and friendships that started on the site, not to mention valuable activism.

But that was all a long time ago.

I am not here to glorify the early days of Twitter.

The truth is that the site, and the community around it, has always had problems.

At some point, though, the negatives of the site outweighed the positive.

If you don’t know what Gamergate is, great: Keep living your life.

But something about that particular harassment campaign destroyed my ability to assume goodwill.

Going viral shifted from being a reward to a punishment, and in general everything felt less fun.

And you know what?

There’s no good reason to stay on a social web connection that isn’t fun.

Are you enjoying yourself?

Or are you just generally feeling kind of bad?

We’d only done two sessions together and she already knew that the website was bad for my brain.

She was onto something.

When I left Twitter in 2022, I noticed rather quickly that I felt less anxious.

The things you pay attention to shape your brain.

Twitter, for me, was shaping it to be worse.

I primarily hang outon Mastodonright now, and I enjoy it a lot.

I’ve reconnected with some of my favorite people from Twitter and met plenty of new ones.

People write back to me.

These approaches may or may not work for youyou may need to try something else.

The soul of Twitter is gone, and has been gone for a while.

And that’s what I’m here to say: Twitter is already dead.

We can mourn that, and we should.

But part of mourning is moving on.