I remember back in the burgeoning days of social media, the ‘forums era’- someone would get mad about something and make a dramatic announcement about how they were leaving. I was only there to find Buffy spoilers. But this announcement, this ‘flounce’ was the online equivalent to storming out of a room and expecting to be followed. Begged to come back.
I always found it cringey and embarrassing, I mean just leave if you don’t want to be somewhere you’re at by choice. Nobody is holding you against your will. Just turn off your computer! And yet here I am, dramatically announcing my exit from Twitter. But I ask only that you please close the door behind me.
Technically, I think I joined Twitter sometime in 2016. I was writing about baseball more often then and needed some kind of online footprint where people could yell at me and say I was a stupid woman who knew nothing about sports. For a while that place was Facebook, and then it became Twitter.
Still, I hardly used it until March 2020 - when my life, like everyone else’s - changed literally overnight. I used to joke that my apartment (where I have lived for nearly two decades) was barely decorated because I was hardly ever there, so what was the point?
And then all of sudden, I was only there. Feeling suffocated by the walls of my living room, but terrified that the outside could kill me, I found solace in my phone. I’d open Twitter, scroll, maybe post something, and then less than 30 seconds later, repeat the entire exercise.
I found baseball twitter, ironically not when I was writing about it, but in the early part of Covid, when I was looking for exercise accountability buddies, or people to ‘watch’ classic games or sports movie together, chatting over our phones while we watched from our individual homes.
I made friends. Real friends. Friends who I would eventually meet in ‘real life’ and would travel for baseball with, or hangout if they were local. And while online friendships can’t show you everything about a person, if you’re trying, you can learn enough to know you want to know them offline too.
And then my dad got sick, and then he died. We were still in lockdowns and I was mourning in my apartment alone. Never wanting to burden anyone, I could reach for my phone and post something about the heaviness of grief. Within seconds I would get replies from people who had also lost parents and who understood what I was feeling, or from those who just wanted to offer some kind of comfort. It wasn’t the same as a hug, or a long walk with a friend. But the immediacy helped.
It was at this same time though that my behaviour started to change. All the rage I had been suppressing. At the cancer that took my dad less than 4 months after his diagnosis, at the people who mocked masks, and covid protections. At the man who coughed in my face when I was out walking to pick up something my dying father was craving because I dared cede room to him on the sidewalk. At the man who repeatedly called me a f*cking c*unt in a grocery store because I asked him to pull his mask up. All that rage started bubbling up, and Twitter provided a perfect release valve.
I started finding intense satisfaction in dunking on people (mostly male sportswriters if I am fully honest) who said something stupid, or sexist. Sometimes I would start it, sometimes I would join a dogpile already in progress.
But it felt good. It felt righteous. If I couldn’t tell off every single person who it felt was actively trying to make the world worse, I could shit on someone who refused to open a can of beans for his kid. I could online yell at someone who still supported any number of the athletes or celebrities or politicians accused of sexual assault, and I could feel good about it. Because I was right. And they were wrong. And they needed to know it.
And I mean, I was right. Of course, I was right. But what good did it do? This bile that I spewed. This spleen that I vented. It was the hollowest of victories. I wasn’t changing anyone’s mind. They weren’t paying attention to me to begin with. It was the equivalent of playing chess with a pigeon, only they wouldn’t even bother to knock the pieces over, just strut around like they won.
Slowly, the world began to open up and with it, I did too. I could put my phone in my purse and ignore it while out with friends, at a baseball game, even just on a solo walk. The stranglehold it had over me for months started to loosen.
My rage, while not exactly gone, didn’t have that chokehold over me anymore either. I could find more productive outlets for it. By volunteering, being present, a good community member. By trying to lead with kindness, learning to let go and knowing I can only control so much.
And so Twitter started to fade into the background of my life again. Now when I would mindlessly scroll, most of the time I had no clue what anyone was talking about it. And I didn’t care enough to figure it out. I could just put my phone down.
Once the US election results made it clear that Trump was being given another mandate to cater to the worst people and his worst impulses, I knew for the sake of my sanity, it was time to leave for good. There was nothing I could do there that would result in anything but my own frustration. And why would I do that to myself?
Really though, the death warrant was pretty much signed when Twitter was bought by the world’s most divorced man, Elon Musk. Who - in the vein of Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson - the most annoying, obnoxious people you know insist is a genius. Once he took it over, changed the name to X (because he thinks the letter is cool???), changed rules on a whim (not enough people laughing at his mortifying attempts at being funny) it became an absolute cesspool of porn bots, MAGA chuds and outright Nazis. I’d already pulled myself out of the mud once, I wasn’t going to get mired in it again.
I’m beyond grateful for the people I ‘met’ on Twitter who are now my real-life friends and travel buddies. For the void it filled when I needed community more than I realized. But as they say, for everything there is a season. And the truth is that my presence and now absence never meant anything in the grand scheme of things anyway.
So thank you Twitter, circa 2020-2024. And uh, if you need me, you can find me by text, phone, email, IG, FB and Bluesky.