Dumped Twitter

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Today I deactivated my Twitter.  I didn't think twice about it.  I'm sure anyone who followed me won't realize I'm gone.

About 6 months ago I deleted Twitter off my phone as an experiment: to see just how frequently I pay attention to tweets and post.  The result:  I don't care about, or use Twitter enough to justify having a username on there anymore.

Let me take a quick second to reminisce . . .

When I first joined Twitter in 2009 (or was it 2008..?) it was one of those fun social media outlets where you could find pictures of everything you regretted the night before.  It was the college students safe haven where every perversion and virtue was churned out mechanically for the world to see.  There was no shame or repercussions for tweeting a drunk selfie that in the morning you'd regret.  Hash tagging was fun too as a way to search topics.  More often than not Twitter wasn't a place for any honest or serious chat.  It was just a platform for college students to brag and advertise where and how drunk they were.  Honestly, despite all else it was a quicker distraction that at least for me didn't turn into a rabbit hole.

It's just not fun any more . . .

Anyone who's still around on Twitter, or has been on Twitter in the last 5 years, can tell you that it's a total drama fest.  Everyone is pissed off at everything, offended by everyone, and trying to have serious discussion in 240 characters.  God forbid if you deviate so much as a millimeter from someone else's political perspective or don't have a rainbow emoji in your Twitter profile!

The worst is anything connected to #CatholicTwitter.  Ugh!  Don't get me wrong, there are many good and decent Catholics on Twitter who are examples of charity and civil conversation, however there is the much more vocal and darker side of Catholic Twitter that is hand over fist a cesspool of eternal drama and narcissism.  I speak as one who has been blocked by most of Catholic Twitter (something which at first I thought was a badge of honor.  Yeah, turns out it's not.)  You have Catholics who literally make their Twitter "brand" to uncharitably insult everyone who isn't Catholic, but when asked a question to discuss their post they return ad hominem attacks and sequentially block them.  And don't forget many of these took an eight month long pause (unless Pope Francis said or did anything) to campaign for Trump to the point where it just became annoying.

The cesspool goes deeper still with sedevacantists parading around pretending to be Catholic, an infamous Jesuit and a Bishop creating confusion and division among Catholics, and a self acclaimed traditionalist publication with a vicious, personal vendetta against a community of Catholic Priests and a few other Catholic publications.  Yeah, it's pretty deep.

It's time for me to jump ship . . .

As much as I miss the days of drunk tweets and all the regrets that came with it, I don't think Twitter is going to return.  I think at this point (gee, thanks Trump and all those who encouraged his tweets by replying...) it's clear to say that Twitter has become and exists now to enable those famished for drama and who like missing the point and conflating what they read.  The drunk tweets and regrets have now become a bad hangover and everyone is searching for relief by ripping each other apart, because that is what happy, well adjusted, and mentally healthy people do.

Ciao, Twitter!