I joined twitter in May of 2007. I was in a fun internet beard-growing community at the time, and Twitter was a cool and new tool to help me keep up with my online friends.
I was a staunch “only follow people I know” advocate for a while, but I eventually cracked to follow accounts for sports and sports teams that I follow. My follow list grew from there to include internet people whose work I enjoyed, as well as an occasional author or artist. These days I really enjoy the baseball stats bots and the sneaker drop notices.
I never got into the politics pool, and I think that’s what kept me a happy user for so many years. I didn’t have any interest in the shared outrage community that blew up there.
Twitter was never a perfect place, but I worked hard to keep my corner of it small-stakes and pleasant. I had a nice setup of third-party apps that I had tuned to make Twitter a pleasant experience.
Obviously, that all got fucked up when Musk bought the damn thing and started tearing it down in the name of…what, free speech? The dude is a rich clown and he ruined it. I haven’t deleted my account, but Twitter is off my phone for the first time in a loooong time.
I’m not so old that I can’t find a new way to follow my friends online, but I haven’t made the Mastodon move and I’m not sure I will. I’ve never given up on blogging (despite the occasional time away) and I’ve been glad to see some friends hopping on that train (Adam, Mike, Daniel).
Look at that big beautiful face. That’s my original profile photo, too. There used to be a lot of pepper in this beard.