Letter about Twitter
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People who know me, know that Twitter has been my primary social media platform for years now. I've loved what the site has been, a perfect blend of being able to catch up with friends, other cool people and brands, and also a convenient way to keep on top of news and what people are talking about.
I've met so many cool and talented people, and learned so many cool and life-changing things. No matter how niche a topic was, someone was on here tweeting about it. And the moment something newsworthy happened, Twitter was always the first place I turned to, to see in real time how the Internet was reacting.
No other site was like Twitter. And no other site will ever be quite like Twitter, no matter how much I'll want that. (Maybe others don't lol!) At its core, Twitter is still the same. The same features are still here. But even before the recent policy changes, Twitter has started to take on a different vibe than before. It wasn't as fun for me to be here anymore.
It's very clear what change to Twitter precipitated everything I'm seeing and feeling today: the change in ownership. Unlike many of the people around me, I've had a pretty neutral opinion of Elon Musk prior to him taking over the website, but what we've seen and heard in the weeks/months following that has definitely colored my perception. It certainly seems like Twitter is now being run by ever-changing whims of one person, rather than by an organized business. And for 4 years, we've already seen how something run by the whims of a single individual has gone.
After the big layoffs at Twitter a few months ago, that was when we first had concerns about needing to jump ship, and so I prepared myself. And with recent events, now seems the perfect time to execute on my thoughts about which sites on the Internet I spend time on and where I should direct more of my time.
I'm planning on making my website my central hub for all the various things and presences I have online. Right now, this includes various software projects I've made over the years, but I'll be planning to add other things too as I branch out to other types of projects.
Like I said, I've met some cool people here, and I'm hopeful that I can find many of you on other locations on the Internet. Anyone out there, mutuals or not, should take a look at my website to learn more about me and perhaps learn about a couple other fun Internet things/places too. I'll link it below. If I don't see you elsewhere on the Internet, then just know that I'll miss you a lot. And everyone, I hope you have a good series of days and weeks going forward. I know I'm pretty bad at initiating conversation, but I care about you and you are important and loved.
For now, I'll keep my main Twitter account around, but you might start to see me on it less. To be honest, I don't think we'll all wake up one day with Twitter suddenly being gone, but I think the Twitter at the end of 2023 will be significantly different than the Twitter we had 6 months ago. Heck, it's already fairly different. I worry what the next year will bring to it.
Thanks for taking the time to read this all! :)
2 months later
19 February, 2023
Hello! This is an update to the above letter that I wrote 2 months ago, where I reflected on my time with Twitter and wanting to rethink what social media I used.
The reason for me posting this update is two-fold: reflecting on the past 2 months and thinking about the future.
Since I've made that post, I've definitely taken to Mastodon and it's been great. I've found people that I've previously followed on Twitter and was very glad to see again, and I've very much enjoyed the vibe and community I've found there. It's been my main social media now.
But there's still topics and communities that are wholly not present on Mastodon, as far as I can find. Things I'm a fan of, YouTubers and brands I like, a lot of these don't have any representation there. So to partake in these fandoms, I have to go to Twitter still.
I've also started consuming from Instagram a bit more, which has also been nice because a lot of my IRL friends are there.
So it's now become this awkward thing where I'm checking 3 social media sites a day, each giving me a little something the others don't have.
I won't delve into the management and policy changes that have occurred in the past 2 months, but suffice to say I'm still not liking the direction Twitter is going. But given what I just said, I'm still maintaining some form of presence there (on Twitter) for now. Going forward, I'll still occasionally post to Twitter as I have been doing, but you'll hear from me less frequently here than you do on Mastodon. I'd love to see more people I follow on Twitter move over to Mastodon, but I'll still pop in over here from time to time.
My programming account, JaykeBirdCoding, will be only used for announcements from here on (I might change the username soon, actually). Programming/tech rambles and progress updates will be posted on my dotnet.social account from now on.
I'm not liking the new direction of Twitter, but thus far the pros of staying there have outweighed the cons of abandoning this site. In the future, the scales may tip more towards me leaving, and I currently don't see a chance of the scales tipping back the other way.
I'm not trying to be dramatic by making this update, and I probably won't make any more of these update posts unless something really major happens. But 2 months seemed like a good amount of time to reflect on this and confirm I did indeed make decisions I've ended up liking.
Thank you for reading!
2 years later
29 April, 2025
It's amazing how much can change in 2.5 years lol.
Part of me is maybe a bit surprised that Twitter (or X, as it's now called) is still as big as it is, but part of me also is not. I know I struggled for quite a while both prior to and after my original letter above, about whether I should even continue to engage on Twitter, given the controversy surrounding how the site was been steered and the person who owned it. While I was writing that letter and commenting to friends IRL about my disdain about the status and direction of the site, it was still my go-to social media app for quite some time.
At some point, though, I did eventually end up stop visiting Twitter. Not sure if there was a single event that caused me to stop, but I think it was just the overall feeling that every time I opened the site, I just wasn't liking the feel and vibe of what I was seeing and how I was feeling with it. I don't want to be overdramatic, so suffice to say, I just wasn't having fun on there anymore. After a point, all I did on Twitter was just post when I was about to go live on Twitch, since it felt obligatory to post it there. So most of my recent posts on that site are... just that lol.
Unfortunately, while I did and still do love Mastodon, and a lot of the community, hard work, and ethos around it, it hasn't been able to scratch the itch in quite the same way. I'm not sure if I have enough time or the right words to be able to describe why it hasn't been able to, but I think part of it has just been the fact that so much of the communities, brands, and interests that I have just didn't have a presence on Mastodon. Again, I still love Mastodon, and I would have no complaints if more of what I see and consume came from ActivityPub-based networks.
Of course, like many of us, the new app BlueSky has pretty much filled the hole that Twitter once previously had. Not in exactly the same way, but I feel more positive about what's going on with this social media platform than any other that I've been using. (And I also have to mention Threads, which had (and maybe still has) potential, but the quirks and annoyances it also had (and maybe still has) pretty much turned me off from even keeping the app downloaded on my phone).
So as it is now, BlueSky and Mastodon are the two places where you can find me. I use an app that allows me to consume both BlueSky and Mastodon, so I'm kind of getting the best of everything over here. All of that combined with the glut of content available on YouTube and Nebula, and I'm currently very happy with what I'm seeing and doing in my little corner of the Internet.
I'm still slowly working on making my website the central hub for everything "Jayke". There's more stuff I want to add to the site, but I'm always overflowing with ideas and I don't have enough time and energy to make it all happen. Some of these ideas will inevitably include me making things happen on this website, so it'll only be a matter of time before you see some updates here.
In the meantime, for those of you who want to catch up on my random thoughts and want to talk or interact with me, please find my accounts listed on my About Me page (linked below).
I can't predict how my usage of various Internet sites will be in years to come. I like where I'm at now, but once upon a time, I liked where Twitter was at, and yet here we are lol. I don't want to keep coming back here and writing more updates in the future, so suffice to say, I'm planning on visiting the sites that'll keep me happy, and I'm planning on keeping my own website up to date and going. Hopefully I'll keep with the same friends I've made both online and IRL, and we'll keep finding each other on whatever social media site is popular now. For now, I hope that any of you reading this have a good day!
Learn more about me / find me on the Internet
My about page has all the info about who I am and where you can find me.