18 days ago, I stopped using Twitter.
Big deal I hear you say. Yes it was. You see, Twitter has been a huge influence on my life over the past few years. I’ve made friendships, lost friendships and maintained friendships. I’ve got work, helped others find work. I’ve laughed and cried in equal measures. It’s been very important.
Of course, Twitter is just a website. For me though, the people I interact with are what make it special. But recently, I decided to knock it on the head, at least for the short term.
“Why Dan?” is probably what you are shouting at your screen. It’s pretty simple really. I stopped caring about it. I also seemed to stop caring about the people that use it which was the crunch moment for me.
I had forged some special relationships on there and I found myself getting pissed off with people which was not good. So I decided to stop.
Even as I type this, I cringe as I probably sound like one of those attention seekers leaving whatever social media platform you read about.
Stopping it was hard to begin with. I used to share links that I liked or if I had questions about stuff I would ask so it was hard to not just jump on and tweet. But as the days passed by, I found myself feeling less inclined to share and I found myself reading more websites for technical answers. I even emailed people to talk to them rather than tweet which was nicer as more was said and with more meaning. The biggest culture shock at first was notifications stopped coming in. Nobody seemed to care that I wasn’t posting except for about 3 people. I guess I just got used to conversations being there and then all of a sudden, they just stop.
Which by the way is fine. I didn’t stop tweeting for attention. You just get used to talking to people. I possibly became too reliant on it if truth be told.
So here we are, 18 days on. What have I learnt…
Well I am totally out of the loop on everything that is going on. I’ve not had to wade through the retweets and the humblebragging that goes on. I have filled the time I normally spend tweeting with other stuff and to be honest, I don’t really miss it now.
I think a change was needed and I feel better for it.