5 reasons why I stopped using Twitter

by Esra'a (Bahrain)

I was late to Twitter. It was the 23rd of December, 2008, when Mideast Youth first had its Twitter account. To be honest, I wasn’t excited to use this service, even though I realized its importance, and I knew it was absolutely vital for a growing network like ours to leverage its power. In many ways I think it helped us, specifically in terms of traffic and readership, so I don’t dismiss the service as entirely useless. Just mostly.

This is my Facebook status from yesterday:

Why I feel this way. Where do I start?

1) Because most people still use Twitter for what it was originally created for: Updates about the average person’s terribly mundane existance. Do you have the option to rule it out? Of course, by limiting your list to specific people/organizations you follow. But 1 in every 3 of those will abuse their access to Twitter by consistently tweeting about things that are so intolerably boring that it’s actually offensive they’d allow the rest of us to suffer through reading it. Because I often sit alone at night and wonder what your favorite color is, your favorite food, your sexual preference.

I tolerated this irritation for months, however, even though I felt myself getting dumber and with less of an attention span. I also found myself much less interested in thought provoking blog posts because it required more of an effort than reading about Ali’s wonderful sandwich, before spending 3 minutes staring at it on Twitpic.

2) A growing number of people think it’s useful to chat publicly on Twitter even as it gets more and more personal.

@shutup Hey did you read that article about that one bitch who hates MUSLIMS?

@shutthefuckup Yeah, that journalist is such a loser, who does she think she is?

@shutup If I had a chance to slap her face with a frozen trout, then believe me, I’d take it.

@shutthefuckup DUDE! I think of us sitting cross-legged, enlightened under the same tree. We’re so similar.

@shutup I’m so happy you’re on my Twitter, MAN!

@shutthefuckup Uh, dude, have my babies.

And of course, someone else in your list always has to butt in even if they have nothing of worth to say because TweetDeck was right there and they really, really need to use it NO MATTER WHAT:

@shutyourface Enjoyed conversation by @shutup @shutthefuckup will u accept me in ur social circle #letschataboutboringstuff

So Twitter updates itself and the chat lists grow like a tumor, and you’re wondering who you should unfollow first without “upsetting them,” an argument with yourself that takes no less than 3 minutes to resolve.

3) Even when your intention is to create a heated but thoughtful conversation, on Twitter any and all criticism makes people sound like abusive bigots. Example:

Dear journalist,

I read your article. Overall, it was well written, but I felt that you skewed some of the facts. You definitely have a grasp on the religious practices of the Aztecs, though throughout history they were grossly misunderstood and mislabeled as brutes because of one ritual practice: that of human sacrifice. The hatred and resentment this practice generated among others, lead to their downfall. It should be noted that the Aztecs had never participated in a violent war. Would you consider revisiting your article if we discuss this in further detail?

Fondly,
Someone who isn’t writing this on Twitter

Here is the same criticism. But in less than 140 characters and on Twitter:

@journalist I read your article. Leave the Aztects alone you dumb shit. u jus jealous.

4) The spreading of rumors. Twitter in many ways is dividing itself by clans. People A vs. People B in each issue, like the pro-LGBT, and anti-LGBT rights, or extremely pro Israel and extremely pro Palestine, etc. If something circulates that serves any group’s interests it would be RTed like no other, regardless of whether or not it’s true. There’s a huge chance that you witnessed something like this:

@Syria ATTN: @Iran has herpes PLZ RT!

@UAE RT @Syria ATTN: @Iran has herpes (RT THIS!!! EW Don’t go near them!!1)

@Bahrain RT @UAE RT @Syria ATTN: Iran has herpes, WE ALWAYS TOLD U SO #FUCKIRAN

@CIA @BarackObama check this out – @Iran has herpes (via @Syria @UAE)

@CNN @FoxNews CONFIRMED. THIS JUST IN: @IRAN HAS SEVERE CASE OF HERPES! #BOMBIRAN

And it just goes on and on? And then someone always is brave enough to send that one DM, when they’re not hiding behind obsessive RTs.

@Iran Do you have herpes? That’s pretty bad! Unfollowed. GET HELP.

Of course, this happens with any other service, and is especially true for blogging, but when it’s in 140 characters, it makes you want to decapitate baby lambs before slamming their heads into a refrigerator.

5) Whatever you tell yourself, hours of your precious time on Twitter goes to immediate waste. Sure, it saved all your “marketing” issues, and Twitter from afar seems HUGE, but most of the people you wish to address aren’t even on there and if they are, more than likely they missed 90% of your tweets because they were asleep, or at work, or on Facebook for the 15 minutes that you posted a link to your blog which they missed.

Wait, “ALL I do on Twitter is actual work, I increase awareness about stuff and things,” and yet you find yourself getting increasingly curious about what everyone is doing on Twitter all the time regardless of whether or not it’s relevant. The Jonas Brothers are a trending topic. AGAIN. And twice a day for the next 3 years. But you still absolutely have to see what’s up with those guys and you’ll click on it, if only to check whether or not someone managed to suffocate them with a pillow yet. Then, you will go back to Ali’s Twitpic sandwich because you can’t HELP but wonder whether that pink thing in it was, God forbid, HAM!

For me, when I really think about it, people on Twitter are turning into one big mass of sheep with no discerning personality features other than the fact that they like to “hug” a lot. And after a while it gets kind of uncomfortable to sit around and watch for no reason other than our apparent curiosity.

Twitter is great for sharing, but it leaves no real room for decent conversations, even though it can sometimes start great lasting ones. It’s common knowledge that it’s awesome for awareness, but only if you can tolerate the banquet of bullshit that comes with the service, which, for busy people, is generally not an option.

I’m done with Twitter, finally. All our Twitter accounts (@mideastyouth @MigrantRights @BahaiRights @KurdishRights @OR318 etc) are now in the hands of volunteers, overseen by Fatima. God help her.

PS: I actually advocate the usage of Twitter wholeheartedly, and the difference it can make to an individual or an organization is huge, hence why our members use it daily. You probably should, too, as long as you can discipline yourself and know your limits, and as long as you’re not guilty of any of these 5 things listed here. Aside from these primary reasons, I also stopped because I simply feel much more productive without it.