Twitter

Facebook, that's the social media platform I first signed up for.

I was hardly an early adopter, it took many, many years until finally the right set of circumstances made me set something up, and then barely use it. That's when then, after I began using Facebook even less, myself, and a good friend, Nick, decided to make Twitter accounts and see if we could get any attention.

It wasn't a serious venture, more just an excuse for use to write little tidbits, and I put my Nick outputting much higher quality as he's a far funnier person than I am.

But then the account I linked in videos, suddenly became an account linked in popular videos, and some people clicked on that linked account, and felt compelled to hit the follow button, and bam, you've got an audience.

What's interesting however, is for all of the complaints you hear about the website, I quite liked Twitter, and I think its because I figured the where the landmines were quickly.

Firstly, you never follow actors.

Okay, there's some exceptions, but the overwhelming majority sadly learned nothing from the Bush era, of how cringe inducing it is to listen to people pretended to be other people for living, shout basic bitch politics 24/7. I'm not oppose to political discussion at all, and I even respect people like SkillUp who don't try to hide their biases in the name of audience safety.

But when two actors I know live-together are quote-tweeting each others Monday posts on Friday for the eighth time that week, I can only imagine what's flowing through their veins isn't blood, but likes.

So you stay clear of those.

You also dodge big corporate accounts, even if you're only interested in news from them, because what they often post isn't news, but a hashtag which happened to be trending that hour and the boardroom decided had enough audience crossover to warrant jumping on the train for.

The environment was good then. I'd follow peers I respect, people I've worked with, artists I admire, etc. And I'd engage with people. Anybody who asks a question, I'd answer as effectively as I could. The genius of Twitter, is 480 characters is something you never don't have time to write.

Whether it's somebody asking a question, debating you, or posting something beginning for replies, you can do it anytime, anywhere. I even said to somebody entertaining me with his lack of intelligence, that its easy for me to respond...

And that's the problem.

It's so damn easy, that just scrolling can sometimes eat up hours of ones day without even noticing. While waiting for a reply from someone else you know is gonna be posted in just a few minutes (because its so easy), you'll scroll through your feed with art ranging from the depressing to the horny, debates hilarious and serious, threads fascinating and stupid, before seeing the aforementioned reply, where you respond right away, despite in your own private writing of scripts, the likelihood of a sentence remaining after you've first typed it is 40/60.

It hit me when going back and forth with somebody about a video-game I thought...

"Wait... why am I talking about games on Twittter instead of playing them?"

As noted two weeks ago, I've gotten back into Apex Legends. I also revisited Forza Horizon 4 and began appreciating that game for what it is rather than what I wanted it to be. I've rewatched Cowboy Bebop and live vicariously through a friend seeing it for the first time. I've stayed up all night brainstorming film-scripts with peers. I've gone back to reading books that've rested on the shelf for years.

I've gone back to being a media-soak, rather than attempting to soak media via Twitter.

In the same way a person can be so compassionate they let people walkover them, Twitter is so easy, that it overwrites anything with the slightest bit of extra effort. It'd be far easier to type out a couple captions to funny pictures I found on a Discord server, than write this... whatever this is.

And that's what I'm trying to keep in mind going forward.

I've not banned myself from Twitter, just trying to only go there when I'm posting something. It doesn't always work, sometimes you click on it out of habit and see a really beautiful piece of artwork or funny article, but now, I've been catching myself, and forcing the tab off when it appears against my best interests.