Well, mostly. I’ve been mostly without Twitter for a couple of months now. I haven’t had a Facebook account for much longer than that. I stopped Instagramming when Facebook bought them. I’ve deleted the Twitter apps from my devices, and now if I want to check in I have to use the browser. Not having notifications or easy launching of a stream adds a bit of friction. I also have 2-factor authentication enabled, and logout after checking in, so dropping into twitter is deliberately kind of a pain in the ass. I only post to Twitter via auto-tweeting from my blog when I post here.
What I’ve noticed recently is that I’m also living without the hot-take. I don’t feel like I need to post my cleverest reaction to everything, nor am I interested in everyone else’s cleverest reactions to everything. I find I’m thinking with less snark. I’m being less sarcastic in general. And I think that has something to do with withdrawing from the hot-take snark-and-sarcasm streams on social media.
I read more. I follow more people via RSS 1, and I’m really digging NewsBlur as a feed aggregator/reader.
Where my day previously was basically “constantly check twitter. Put the phone down. Pick it up. Forget why. Check twitter. Repeat. All. Day. Long.” It’s now “check email, check feeds in NewsBlur, check the Times to see if Agent Orange has done something dangerously stupid, check Reddit to see interesting things in the subs I subscribe to. Done.”
That last part, “Done.”, is huge. My entire online checkin might take me 10 minutes. Maybe twice a day. And then I can be done with The Internetâ„¢ and walk away and do more interesting things. I am no longer concerned about Being Right on the Internetâ„¢, nor of correcting Those Who Are Wrong on the Internetâ„¢. Or feeding (or avoiding) the sociopathological trolls 2. Who cares? Life is way too short to spend time worrying about that kind of nonsense.
Done.