Why I Unfollowed You
So, I used to follow you on Twitter, but now I don’t. What’s up with that?
The first thing to say is: it’s not personal. Unless it is, of course, personal: but in that case you already know what you did. You monster.
It’s obviously much more likely — given your upstanding character and sunny disposition — that you have fallen foul of my progressive campaign to free myself from dependence on The Bad Place. Did I say that out loud? I meant to say Twitter.
I like doomscrolling as much as the next fellow, of course. But since April when I last discussed matters of so-called “social” media, things on The Hellsite have gone about as badly as they could have, consequent to its purchase by the world’s richest tunneling equipment and flamethrower magnate. The ratio of outrage to useful information is going in the wrong direction fast, and the quality of doomscrolling available has plummeted as a result. It’s just exhausting watching all those strangers argue past each other.
My best guess at this stage is that the Bluebird of Unhappiness is doomed to circle the black hole of its new owner’s ego until it is either entirely crushed by the tidal forces, or he gets bored and wanders off to assist some other large corporation turn back into a struggling start-up. I think we have a responsibility to future civilisations to signpost the resulting floating rubble as a hazard to navigation; the message should be that this place is not a place of honor… this place is best shunned and left uninhabited. Social media implemented in that fashion, with those incentives, was not humanity’s best idea.
Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, why I unfollowed you. Well my hope is that the reason for
that was that I decided to follow you somewhere else instead! For example, if you have
a Mastodon or other Fediverse account, you’ll be picking up followers there
as you lose them elsewhere. If you followed me on The Twitters, I invite you to do
the same: unfollow me now, with gusto, and make my acquaintance anew at
@iay@mastodon.social. I might actually post a bit more now that the
environment I’m posting into is not actively horrible.
As well as relocating my primary doomscrolling location, I’ve started getting back into that retro technology we all used to use before microblogging was a thing. That means RSS and such, so if you have a real old-fashioned steam-powered blog-type blog, I’m probably subscribed to that already. Either that or my friend Huginn is watching over you for me, and I’ll wake up to your wisdom fresh every morning in my daily digest, to enjoy with my delicious morning cup of coffee.
Doesn’t that sound nicer?