I loved X before I lost my mind. Some of my happiest times were spent there. We made lasting bonds, laughed a lot, and started a new career.
When I joined what was then known as Twitter in 2009, I was bored, working in an office, blogging on the side, and yearning to be a writer. Twitter made it happen. I posted what I wrote, and slowly people started reading it, and eventually some people asked me to write for them for money. Without exaggeration, it made my professional dreams come true.
That was also a lot of fun. I met my best friend on Twitter when she was pretending to be two office dinosaurs named Steve and Dave. That was the atmosphere at the time. Stupid things, gossip and parody accounts, stupid trends, chats. One thing my serious workplace didn’t have was a water cooler.
The combination of these factors made Twitter so addictive that for over a decade I opened it when I woke up in the morning and stopped scrolling only when I went to bed. I considered it a work necessity. A place where you can post your writing and connect with professional contacts. How to capitalize on ideas and interesting events. But even if I hadn’t, I would have been there.
Not because it was pure joy. Reading about so many brilliant careers has made me feel insecure at work and frequently suffer from fomo (or rather, a stage beyond fomo, that is, to which I am not invited). when you know you’re missing out because everyone is talking about it). Especially since 2016, when Brexit and Donald Trump messed things up, Twitter has gotten angrier, louder and more nasty. I was avoiding online aggro, but it felt like I was listening to hundreds of fights a week, and each one caused a jolt of secondary stress. It wasn’t fun anymore, but I was hooked and chased the early highs even though the revenue dropped dramatically.
I would like to say that I found the will power to make the conscious decision to quit. In fact, it was all thanks to Elon Musk and menopause. Musk’s takeover wiped out any remaining Buzzstones and left me with boring and anger-inducing content that didn’t interest me. X (well, that name is also very embarrassing) became a much less addictive product: a kind of methadone Twitter.
Then menopause hit and I found myself struggling to cope with rapidly changing online input. It’s said that around 6,000 tweets are posted every second on the internet, and I felt like I was seeing them all, constantly filled with one-sided opinions and chatter. In real life, I hate listening to other people’s conversations at work and am the type to use earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones, but online I tolerated it every day.
X was also the focus of my anxiety. Every time I opened the app (I mechanically operated it hundreds of times a day), my fingers tingled with fear in my adrenal cortex. It used to be a fun place for me to post mindless old nonsense. Now it felt revealing and hostile. The last time I worked up the courage to post (a photo of a hen in a tree), someone grilled me and asked me why I hadn’t responded to emails. It wasn’t anything dramatic, but in my hormonally challenged state, it sent me an email. In a spiral.
Disabling the account felt like a band-aid. But gradually it became an option. It’s not easy. Life is smoother without the constant stream of angry, opinionated, and news tickers. I used to feel trapped in the zeitgeist. My answer to “What’s going on?” is: The question that appears at the top of the X app is “I don’t know.” That’s difficult in my job.
I also miss the people who were involved in Parasocial as a part of my life for 15 years. I keep in touch with some people in real life and on Instagram (a reasonably usable app), but working from home without virtual chatter can feel lonely.
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The advantage is that the mind becomes much quieter. Unfortunately, my productivity hasn’t skyrocketed, but I’m calmer and more functional. I find it’s easier to concentrate when I don’t have thousands of strangers yelling at me (well, all around me).
Someone recently messaged me and suggested I join one of the few Twitter-like alternatives out there. “It was fun, like old Twitter,” she said. I thought about it for a while. Then I realized: I can never go back.
