The comedian Michael Che was on a talk show this month and he made the remark that “Twitter is like, if everybody you hated had your phone number.”
Now I didn’t get hatred directed at me. Not being confrontational and not being on Twitter a heckuva lot saved me from that fate, but even so, I ran across all levels of anger and I mostly just followed breweries and beer people. Why did my “feed” contain all this anger and outrage? It wasn’t like I was following anything deeply divided along fault lines.
So I have stepped back from Twitter. Haven’t visited for months and only post beers being consumed via Untappd. I figure that ticking isn’t adding any negativity to the platform.
Now this isn’t some, my life is so much better for leaving social media, post. I still check Facebook and Instagram on a daily basis. But I don’t close the tab or app feeling scuzzy or like a looky-loo scoping out a highway accident the way that I do when done with Twitter. And to be honest, I do not know why Twitter has become so cringe inducing to me. Perhaps I am still de-unsensitized to it. Maybe if I patrolled other sites like Reddit where even more vitriol is apparently seen then I wouldn’t feel this way about Twitter.
Part of what really pushed me out the Twitter door was how outrage was being cheapened on a daily basis and how a savvy social media manager would be better served to not engage and let one of these mini-controversies (real or imagined) pass from view and be replaced by the next. No actual debate was happening just a bit of shouting until someone else shouted louder.
Leaving has not left a Twitter sized hole in my life, and may even make me happier at the end of the day since I don’t hear about the weird and the rude side of the beer world. And perhaps I will dip my toe back into the conflict filled waters one day.