or “I unfollowed you because I love you and it hurts too much to see you this way.”
Back in 1991 I was a something of a comics nerd and a regular reader of 2000AD. At that time some of 2000AD’s top creators decided they didn’t want to work for The (big green alien) Man and started their own title, Toxic, which I duly started buying.
The arrival of Toxic caused me to take a hard look at 2000AD, which was going through a pretty dry patch, and as you’d expect it didn’t stand up well. But neither did Toxic. If anything it was worse. Within a few months I’d stopped buying either of them. Toxic died a hubric death and the creators crawled back to the mothership but I was well gone by then. Where, I can’t quite remember and it doesn’t matter because this scene-setting introductory metaphor has run its course.
This weekend I unfollowed all but a handful of people on Twitter. 17, down from 250-odd. There are good reasons for the remainder but they’re not really that interesting (some who just post cool links, a couple of people I need to be able to DM, both Fionas). My twitter stream is empty and quiet, updating maybe once every couple of hours or so.
It’s lovely.
I should have done it ages ago.
So why don’t I just quit Twitter if I hate it so much? Well, I don’t really. I like posting to Twitter – there’s something beautiful about the 140 limitation and I like to think I’ve achieved some mastery of it. I also like some of the exchanges I have with folks about stuff I’ve posted. A chat with Steffan today about how the Welsh might pronounce Lloyds Bank was most enlightening.
So am I being a hypocrite? Reaping the benefits of the network without properly engaging with it? Probably, but that never stopped anyone from justifying their actions on the internet.
Truth is I’m tired of finding people I care for to be boring or annoying. Facebook started this, which is why I can’t bear to be there anymore. All my sparky, intelligent friends rendered tedious and ordinary. This isn’t the Internet I was promised. And now I find those traits coming into my Twitter stream. The self-promotional stuff is to be expected (and pretty useful to be honest) but the petty complaints, bitter jibes, passive aggressive taunts, cruel subtexts. Sure, I post my fair share of that crap but that doesn’t mean I want to read it in others, particularly from those who are supposed to lift me up, inspire me to greatness, to do all those things I want to do.
The Internet is a mirror. What I’m moaning about is merely myself reflected in it. No one should take this personally, though they will because the Internet is a mirror. Ah well.
Oddly enough this isn’t why I haven’t been blogging for months. That’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish but the fish is a similar breed. Ill-fitting fish.
My life has changed a bit over the last couple of years and looks likely to change again in the near future. I’m nothing close to the same bloke who started blogging in 2000, nor the guy who signed up for Twitter in 2007 or whenever the fuck that was. My Flickr activity alerts tell me about strangers faving photos I can’t remember taking last decade, which is nice but kinda odd.
My online activity doesn’t seem to fit me anymore. I’m not wanting it to be a perfect representation of my inner self – just a grubby reflection of my current appearance will do. There’s too much noise, too much clutter in the methodology I’ve devised.
I’ve often thought we’ve made it easy to add shit to the web but hard to archive it away. It’s all or nothing. Maintain or delete. The Internet doesn’t do The Past very well (Hell, Twitter can’t remember past last week) and I understand why. I’ve got boxes of zines and comics that I can’t throw away due to some warped perception of “historical value” but can’t bring myself to sort through or even find a new home for. It’d be easier just to bin it all.
At some point I’m going to sustainably delete a bunch of things I have online. They’ll still be somewhere safe as I’m not stupid, but they won’t be easily findable online. Sure, I’m removing value from the network but the notion of feeding the web with good content seems archaic and naive now the corporations have taken over and filled the search engines with crap.
In fact the Internet as a whole feels dead or dying. I am, of course, a gin-soaked old frontiersman cursing at the plumbing of modernity while wistfully reminiscing about dysentery on the wagon trail, and all modern types should ignore me. Enjoy your Internet. It really is better than what you had before and should be celebrated and protected. But it’s not my Internet.
I didn’t get into this because I loved the ‘net. I got into this for the same reasons I got into zines. Because they offered me a gateway to people who didn’t annoy me that much. Sure, blogging and comics and zines had their idiots and arseholes – subcultures breed extremists after all – but they also offered a haven for the searchers, the dreamers, the optimists and the noodlers. The people who won’t or can’t do what they’re “supposed” to do. My kind of people. You know, the ones who you could filter by whether they listened to John Peel or not.
Twitter served this function for the first year or so. Those who immediately got it and thrived on it tended to be those who needed it. Michael’s 2009 post on the subject says it best and I know of many people who were lost and alone for whom Twitter became not just a crutch but a way back to society. There’s a reason why those early adopters evangelised so hard – it genuinely changed their lives.
For me personally it didn’t change my life any more than the zines, comics, blogs, Flickrmeets and rest already had. Which isn’t to diminish those Twitter revelations in any way. For me this shit was normal. Welcome to the party, people. Enjoy it before someone shows it to a local radio DJ and the rot starts to set in.
But I’m reminiscing about dysentery and that’s never pleasant so I’ll get back to the point. Because there is one.
I’m disillusioned with Twitter for various reasons. An elitist desire for cosy counter-culture community is demonstrably one of them and the answer from my fellow seekers of that early adopter glow is to go to App.net, the new paid-by-users service that promises to be all that Twitter could have been if the company hadn’t decided to become an ad-supported media company (a model which has worked SO well for Yahoo…). I like the ethics behind App.net and wish it all the best, but, and at this point I should warn you I’m about to call back to the first few paragraphs of this post so you might want to refresh your memory, it reminds me of that time when the cool kids decided to start their own comic that would do the same stuff only better. And I took a hard look at both alternatives and decided that, actually, the same stuff wasn’t worth it anymore.
The Twitter model is still an awesome way of connecting people. To have a network that is completely decentralised with no explicit groups or affiliations is still revolutionary. Even hashtags, which I’ve come to despise for my own petty reasons, are pretty amazing pieces of grass-roots organisation.
But what the Twitter model is doing to my perception of the people I care about isn’t turning out to be so good. I need a new tool to do what I need and ersatz copies of Twitter, no matter how ethically or sustainably built, aren’t going to do that. Similarly the model of blogging I’ve been pursuing over the last 12 years has stopped working and needs to be changed.
“Join the conversation.” Whoever came up with that slogan needs a good slap.
