I have been fully off Twitter (as in, account deleted) for a few months, and I was thinking about it today.
Why today? Well, I watched Louis CK’s most recent standup show, recorded at Madison Square Garden. I was a huge Louis CK fan before he was hit by the #MeToo bus. His alleged misbehavior was gross, but it was his arrogant, performative, public “apology” that really changed my mind about him. Since then, I’ve watched a handful of Louis CK clips that crossed my various feeds, but this is the first time I watched him do a whole hour since his #MeToo scandal. I have thoughts.
But this isn’t about Louis CK. It’s about having thoughts and deciding what to do with those thoughts.
Since I quit Twitter, I’ve become much more aware of what precisely I enjoyed about it. One thing I enjoyed was the succinct wit, and the succinctly witty takes about things—consequential things as well as utterly trivial ones. TikTok has largely filled that particular Twitter void for me, and I’m finding the vibe on TikTok to be refreshingly earnest and wholesome compared to how things felt on Twitter.
Another thing I enjoyed about Twitter was the sense that I was tuned in to the culture—to the news and current events and what they meant to people. It felt like a super efficient way to go just beyond the headlines and into the first layers of both the facts and the commentary. I haven’t found anything equivalent to Twitter for this, but I’m also not really missing it. My days feel lighter without it. My mind feels cleaner.
What I do miss is having a place to share a quick opinion about something. I have lots of throwaway thoughts during the day, punctuated occasionally by an insight that feels pithy, witty, or even wise. Twitter was a place where I could post these at the moment of conception, rough and unpolished as they were. It was place to get things off my chest and feel a lightweight solidarity with a few strangers.
I like writing here, but it’s not a place where I feel like I can drop a rough thought or two about Louis CK’s recent show, for example, and then just leave it at that. I’m craving that kind of venue but not necessarily looking for one. Right now I’m just curious about the craving itself and reflecting on what it means about me.
“What I do miss is having a place to share a quick opinion about something.” There’s the rub, isn’t it? I sometimes do as well. It’s learned behavior for both of us. No one needs that opinion, and no one’s actively looking for it. (Your longer-form Substack, on the other hand, is something I am excited about every time you publish). In my case it’s more that I want to share links to things I’ve read, from people who have interesting things to say or who wrote a great book or what have you. But I’m still far happier being off social media and having that purity of mind to NOT know about Twitter reaction to Louie CK than I was when I’d obsessively open the app 15 times or more a day.