Quitting social media

No it can't. And if it does then you're trying too hard.

 

And if it's people tweeting shit about your stories, well, thems the breaks for being in the .01% of professional writers. That's a whole other emotional issue.

 

I quit Twitter in the spring and it has been a blessing. Then again, I don’t work in News or hot takes anymore, so I don’t need to keep up. If it’s truly News, you can read about it in The Week. It’s a big circle jerk in the FOMO revolution. Believe me, ya ain’t missing shit

 

I’m paraphrasing David Foster Wallace, but he said if you can’t control what draws on your attention, you are fucked. For me, that’s not even turning on mediums. I don’t have regular TV anymore and can’t tell you how many hours I’ve gotten back that would have been lost watching crap

 

Sounds like you've got it all figured out.

 

It seems like people's dismissal of social media bothers you far more than social media bothers those same people.

 

I quit Twitter, and am one of the people quasi-pressuring typefitter into quitting. I detailed some of those reasons on the Cam Newton thread and the Barstool thread, but will repeat some of them here.

Twitter has ruined my attention span. It is a bottomless scrolling beast that can never be satiated. I used to dive into long novels and read a 100 pages in a night, and now my mind flickers away from the page after two boring paragraphs wondering what's going on with people around the world. It's really modeled addicting behavior in my brain, and I don't like it. Sometimes I'll be reading my feed, and links I see, off and on and realize an entire hour has gone by. There has to be a better use of my time.

I didn't get in journalism to be a "personality." There are two different uses for Twitter, I suppose. You can use it to scrolling news feed, and you aren't addicted, that's fine. It's a great way to see links and information you otherwise wouldn't see. Following the election stuff without Twitter yesterday was really hard, so I have a burner account that I use just to read but not post.

The other way is that you both read and post, and I've learned that's a bad idea for me. It is not helping my career as a writer to tweet various thoughts (or jokes; or grievances) that pop into my head. It's a great way to "shoot your dick off" as a friend recently said. Tweeting out stories, and feeling like they're a success or failure based on how well they do on Twitter, is a completely ridiculous way to judge the work you do. IT DOESN'T MATTER. It generates no traffic, and it's mostly a circle jerk. Twitter is very often journalists performing for other journalists. With Nazis jumping into the threads.

Frankly, I should never have been tweeting anything political at all. There is this idea that you have to "speak up" and "speak out" and "be on the right side" of every issue on Twitter and I'm so weary of the whole thing. It's so easy to have opinions. It's so much harder to do good journalism, and having so many opinions (that are archived for all to see) hurts your ability to do journalism.

What if I want to profile someone really interesting, but they're a Trump supporter and I'm on Twitter expressing my frustration with this administration and the subject is like "Yeah, zero chance I'm doing this with you..." I'd like to believe I can divorce the two, that being liberal doesn't mean I can't write really good and respectful stories about conservative athletes. (Ask Carson Wentz or Kirk Cousins!)

But it would be easy for some athlete to say: No way.

And easy for some editor to say: I can't give you this assignment because you popped off about this subject two years ago on Twitter.

I'm increasingly sickened by how evil Facebook is. Not the users, because I think pics of my high school friends' kids are fun to see, but the actual Facebook people behind the curtain. The lies they've told repeatedly about selling our privacy, and how they've made shadow profiles for all of us by scanning our email, our contacts, our purchases, our internet searches — it's really gross. The site has way too much power, and they're abusing it daily because Zuck has no morals. Take the Russians money to fuck with the election? Sure, why not. Lie about how pervasive it was? Sure. Push stories that are not only false but damaging to democracy because they do "great engagement numbers?" Yup, they did that too. It's a weird price to pay to see my sister's kids at the Rockies game.

I suspect I'll be back on Twitter eventually. You have a year after you deactivate your account to bring it back to life. But not having an outlet to post things that pop into my head, even if it's just "I really like this story" or "I don't like the Astros player who mocked Yu Darvish" has been a tremendous relief.

Your milage may vary.

 

Bother me? No. Certain things I don't expect from certain people. More power to them.

 

Which you've done often -- whole stories in 25-tweet segments -- which I think is one of your strengths ... totally different from your magazine work. That's why you excel at it.

 

Unfortunately, this is not what I get paid for. No one in charge cares. And we could argue (and perhaps we both would) that they should care, that it's an inventive use of the medium or that more writers should adapt and show versatility, but in truth, no one cares. Twitter is a headache for bosses and I'd rather not be a headache, or do something that would put my kids' future at risk because I clap back at some racist who keeps harassing me because Clay Travis sent him my way.

 

And I thought I was a universalist.

 

That's not at all what I'm talking about.

It did take me too long to start blocking a few particularly vocal critics. But I could honestly give a shit what people think of my stuff at this point. I do my best.