I’ve posted this story on social media before, but it’s worth blogging about, especially given the January 2025 context I would like to explore.
I Quit Twitter Because of Tulips
I mean, I also quit Twitter because it was spiraling into a cesspool of blazing garbage. But the final straw for me to make that leap was, in fact, a whole lot of tulips.
I was an early adopter of Twitter. I’ve run over 17 accounts. I’ve given training on best practices. (I once taught used car salesmen how to effectively use the tool so well I got written up for the Porsche Academy), I had communities that I took part in regularly for years. By the first few months of 2023, I was getting tired of the bots, of the trolls. Then we went to Keukenhof gardens in Amsterdam.
Aside from the hypersaturated blooms with light filtering through translucent petals, there was something else that I noticed and observed in the botanical gardens – the crowds. The place was as crowded as Disneyworld. There were throngs of people milling around this garden to look at tulips.
I realized in that moment that that was the version of humanity that I wanted to see. That humans, happy to have a sunny day in the Spring, happy to look at pretty flowers, happy to be dorky nerds looking at luscious plant petals… that was the version of humanity I wanted to be a part of.
My view of humanity had been skewed by Twitter- this had already happened in those early months of the current ownership. The posts there were getting darker and more upsetting. The light, community, and laughter was drowned out. Twitter had made me forget that humans are dorks who like flowers.
I decided that I wanted to hold onto the view of humanity that I glimpsed in the botanical gardens. Tulips are now my measure for how likely I am to use any platform. Does my feed make me feel dread and anger about humanity? Or does it give me a sense of hope? Of beauty? Joy?
I decided that for social media platforms in general, I will stay as long as I can see the beautiful dorkiness of human joy.
The Fallout of Quitting Twitter
One of the things I don’t talk about very often is what happened after I downloaded my tweets and friend lists, and deleted my account for good.
I lost contact with a lot of friends and communities that I miss deeply. Twitter had been where I’d had a community of people to talk about chronic illness with. A community of autistic folks to share tips. A community of writers and creative people to share inspiration. A huge community of local folks in New Mexico who had banded together on the platform during the wildfires and became friends IRL.
Some of those folks have appeared on Mastodon, on BlueSky, even on Instagram and Threads. I’m slowly finding them, but they are scattered across a number of places – places with different moods and attitudes, different memberships, different concepts.
I also deleted over half my platform. If you’ve followed my goal posts over the past year at all, you know that I worked hard through 2024 to get to over 10K followers across social platforms. I had deleted 7K in one fell swoop in April of 2023. I had a lot of lost ground to recover. It took a year and a half to do it.
I don’t regret quitting Twitter.
The move had an immediate and long-lasting improved effect on my mental health. I feel better for having done it. But it wasn’t done without sacrifice.
Now, as we look at the current social media landscape, I’m applying lessons learned to the next moves I might make.
Considering Meta & Recent Events
I am not going to weigh in very much on the whole TikTok debacle. I didn’t like the UX of the app, and deleted it almost immediately, retreating to watch stale week-old tiktoks on Instagram Reels like the Gen Xer I am. I was concerned for free speech, for the livelihoods of creators, for the implications of the move of disallowing it. I’m still concerned about the way it was brought back online in a propaganda-filled mess. It’s not quite a “not my circus not my monkeys” and more of a tangential concern – “I work on one sideshow for this circus, and who the hell is taking care of those monkeys?”
However, I do have to (and frequently have, over the past decade) consider whether or not I want to continue to participate on Meta’s platforms. I have long hated what Zuckerberg does and stands for. I hate the algos themselves. I don’t love the platforms. They are tools. Facebook, Instagram and Threads have never protected at-risk communities, the Facebook platform is based on and rooted in sexual objectification and misogyny. This is the algorithm that discovered that if you sprinkle a little outrage in, people stick around longer. It’s always been exploiting people’s darkest sides to make a buck. The announcement of no longer fact-checking is just saying the quiet part out loud.
The facts that Meta has an antitrust hearing coming up, that it doesn’t have any footprint in China, that Zuckerberg stands to gain a lot of ground with the new administration… those elements are also not lost on me.
I use Facebook – both a private profile and an author page – and Threads on my work computer during the workday. I don’t have any of those apps or Messenger on my phone. I do still have Instagram on my phone. In fact, IG and YouTube are the only 2 social apps I have on my phone anymore. I liked IG since before Meta bought it. It used to be like Pinterest – a happy place with pretty pictures. I have eyes both on Bluesky’s developing alternative platform, and on the antitrust hearing set for the Spring that may mean Meta has to divest Instagram.
As it stands right now, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads make up 37% of my social platform. That platform I worked SO HARD to create last year. So I don’t want to just nuke my accounts and salt the earth behind me. That would be lesson learned number 1.
Also, as the TikTok ban has repeatedly reminded me, just as having a huge part of my platform on Twitter had taught me, this is a question of diversification. I don’t want to have a huge chunk of my following all wrapped up in one platform. Because shit happens. Then what? While it’s tempting in terms of time management to consolidate efforts on one platform at a time, it’s not a good idea. Lesson learned number 2.
I do want to continue to grow the parts of my platform that have the biggest payoff – either through direct control or potential monetization. So, I think I’d like to grow some of my non-Meta platforms – especially Patreon, YouTube, and my personal email list – before I pull the plug completely.
For now, I will continue reduced, distanced participation.
I will likely continue to keep Facebook and Threads as “work” accounts. By keeping them off my phone, I’m better able to control how much time I doom scroll. By having them on my work computer and in that context, I tend to stick to doing work-related things on the apps. I’m probably going to have to delete Instagram off my phone for mental health. It no longer brings me beauty or joy. It’s pretty much just Reels and memes at this point.
I have a Buffer account I’ve been experimenting with, and I think I want to use that as a distancing tool for those even more. Buffer is a scheduling tool that allows me to post in advance and plan my feeds. I’ve only been using it so far for pushing content to apps I barely ever touch like Pinterest and Mastodon. But I think I’m going to expand that.
I don’t need to scroll. One of the worst things we can do is allow the algos to feed us our news. They are programmed for the for-profit company’s success metrics, not for our mental health or even depth or breadth of news coverage.
I switched to a curated news app (I use Flipboard) to get news that’s relevant to me. I can train that algo to show me more of the stuff I like (please let me know about meteor showers!) and to only show me the stuff I don’t care about if I go seeking it out. (I will probably never seek out sports news!) I also had Josh help me install an antenna so I can get local free TV and local weather. So if I really need the news, then PBS is also an option.
I’m also not sure what to do about the community part – and the loss of connection. First of all, Facebook is one of the few online ways people in my small rural area actually communicate about events and news that affects the area. By dropping Facebook, I’d lose a vital lifeline to my community.
Further, a lot of my family is on Facebook, and uses it to share information and updates. I know that just puts the onus on me to text and stay in better touch, should I leave. But that’s a lot of effort and time (I have a whole lot of cousins!) that I would rather spend on other pursuits.
There may yet be a day when I delete my profiles across Meta platforms, but it’s going to take something as magical as tulips for me to get there. For now, I’m just going to keep distancing myself.