Breaking Up with Twitter

It was time for this abusive relationship to end.

I kept finding reasons to stick around on Twitter just a little bit longer.

“Maybe it’ll get better. You just have to be patient like everyone says.”

“You might be able to use it again in a professional capacity. Some day.”

“If you can reach just a few people (which is all Twitter really allows you anyway, Suzanne), it’s worth it.”

I’m not gonna lie, the thought of breaking up with Twitter scared me. The platform helped me out a lot during the early days of COVID.

I felt like I was going insane as everyone around me locked down, chose their “bubble”, and complied with every mandate thrown their way. Yet, on Twitter, I found others like myself. And I started to think, “Maybe I’m not the crazy one”.

These Twitter users questioned everything. They challenged the powers that be who dared lock us down while enjoying their freedoms and luxuries. They chose not to give in or to give up when their jobs, relationships, or freedom were threatened.

While there are still some Twitter users like that, it feels like a lot of them have gone to sleep again.

You’ve got the Musk stans who fail to look at his actions and focus instead on his based tweets as a sign that he’s the hero they need. (And why anyone would believe that there’s a hero coming to save us is beyond me.)

You’ve got the ones who fervently support Trump. They refuse to acknowledge what he did to us in 2020 and the NWO he intentionally or unintentionally helped to usher in. Many have gone so far as to say they won’t vote for any Republican who wins the nomination if Trump doesn’t get it. (I’m convinced that MAGA Republicans do everything they can to lose because they enjoy playing the victim card as much as the left does.)

Not to mention all the people who get caught up in every new distraction and psyop, forgetting about what had them all up in arms yesterday and the day before that.

It’s not just the user base that has become toxic to be around. It’s the platform itself. There is no freedom of speech on Twitter.

“Sure, you get freedom of speech. But there’s no guaranteed freedom of reach.”

Well, then, jackass… That’s not freedom of speech. You cannot add a qualifier to that human right without negating the whole thing.

There’s nothing free about Twitter.

No one should find out the day of their movie release (that they paid to promote) that Twitter is going to slap a “hateful conduct” warning on it and limit who’s able to find it. (Then again, I have my suspicions that that whole thing was staged by the Daily Wire and Musk.)

No one should be punished for writing on another platform like Substack and left unable to share their posts on a platform where they’ve grown a sizable audience.

No one should have to beg Mr. Musk to let them back on because they got banned for posting something innocuous. And even if they posted something hateful or inappropriate, who cares? Why are people so unwilling to just scroll past something they don’t like or that offends them? We are living in a world full of weak people who feel entitled and empowered by the ability to strike someone down all too easily online.

And no one should be told that they’re limited to seeing 600 tweets a day because they didn’t pay for a blue checkmark. I don’t care if it’s temporary (which I doubt it is, especially for the non-paying users). If Musk can’t get a handle on “AI scrapers” or whoever it is he’s blaming this policy on, why should Twitter users be the ones punished for it?

The Break-Up

Despite all my gripes and my serious concerns about what’s coming down the line very soon for Twitter/X Corp, it took some time for me to delete my account.

But I did it today. Just a couple clicks, an entry of my password, and poof! @sescacca no longer exists.

This whole thing reminded me of a relationship I was in in my late 20s/early 30s. He was an attractive and very charming man. He made me feel seen, made me feel understood.

He didn’t wait long to show his true colors. And even though I recognized early on that his behaviors were abusive, manipulative, and generally toxic, I found reasons to stay. Not only that, the people around me gave me more reasons to stay. They told me that relationships were supposed to be difficult. That I had the ability to help change him. That things were definitely going to get better because we loved each other.

The longer I stayed in that relationship, the harder it was to try and pull myself out of it. It’s that whole sunk cost fallacy. I believed that because I had invested so much of myself — my time, my energy, my love — into the relationship and that man, that I couldn’t afford to leave.

I think that’s why I was so scared to leave Twitter. I knew there was nothing of value there. In fact, I knew that it was only going to add to my stress and anxiety and anger. But I’d been on there for so long and put a lot of effort into growing my account that it seemed like a huge loss to step away.

But you know what?

I feel no remorse. It’s similar to how I felt when I quit Amazon. And Netflix. And all the other digital tools and apps they use to keep us looking at screens and asleep at the wheel of life. I feel much more at peace and definitely a whole lot freer.

I don’t expect anyone else to follow me in quitting Twitter. Though if you’ve been feeling as I have, you might want to consider getting the fuck off of there sooner rather than later.

Bad things are heading our way (like a universal basic income and digital IDs) now that the recession and AI is killing the workforce. And X Corp is going to be one of the tools our overlords use to make it all come to fruition and with massive public acceptance.