Bye Bye, Bird Site
Not even a full month has passed since I deactivated my Twitter account. I have a reminder scheduled for 29 days post-deactivation to confirm my decision, a day before the account will be permanently deleted. My decision is already confirmed, however; I won't return to the platform.
A hard choice for a writer today. At least that's what my gut screamed the first week, the sentiment echoed by writers of every type: journalists, columnists, novelists. The conditioned act of branding and selling ones self for the clicks runs deep. How could it not? No eyeballs on your work? No paycheck. The only way to succeed is to continuously dance back and forth across the line between quality content and click-bait drivel. Unfortunately, Twitter's algorithms trained us to produce low-quality garbage simply to survive.
The habit permeated all of our interactions until finally the modus operandi of the user base swung between spewing vitriol and tapping refresh for the next meaningless hot take.
For those who held back on posting, conscious that every word typed could be weaponized in a blink through a nonsensical viral explosion, Twitter was an isolating experience. "Shouting into the void" is an apt description of the platform. No responses, one's posts immediately silenced by the algorithmic design that elevates only the loudest voices across all feeds. Left to wonder exactly why 200+ souls deigned to follow in the first place, it becomes clear that, just as we are numbers on the productivity line of the work place, we are numbers in the digital place. Of our own accord we made our way to Twitter, sank countless hours of our lives into "optimizing" and "branding" ourselves in the infinitesimally small chance of discovery. The only thing we have to show for our efforts now is the unbearable debt of online irrelevance.
Other platforms had run their course for me over the years. One after another, replaced in a younger mind more desperate in its need to know. But the options are all the same design with a different skin. You sell yourself to a number of followers and rack up points of validation. Text-based, image-based, video- or audio-based, it's all the same. Our existence is commodified and coded through systems that seek to keep us glued to the content without regard to our well-being.
Even recognizing this reality, I still found myself looking for a digital commons to which I could belong. And by some weird twist of luck, I returned to the idea of the Fediverse. I dabbled years before but was overwhelmed by too many options and too few familiar people. But after years of an increasingly more anonymous existence, what more did I have to lose? Plus, if there's the remote chance of growing a tiny little service into a sizeable thorn in the side of mainstream social media, my anti-establishment, independent-minded little heart was on board.
This time around, I sought a smaller server to set as my home base. Experience over the years has taught me that the types who flock to the most popular, biggest events or locations, are not my people. I didn't want the unhinged outliers either, so I found a server dedicated to a niche interest and made myself at home. I was not prepared for that first week on Mastodon.
Interactions. Live people, greetings! Welcoming the newcomers with helpful guides and tutorials. The absolute confusion of teasing out how the Fediverse worked, where to find people, what the heck is a toot, all mixed with strangers around the world offering grace and forgiveness for our Twitter-wired behaviors. Gaining followers who, I marveled, said hi first.
Mastodon is not without plenty of problems, however. Bigotry and racism runs rampant on some servers while the sudden popularity of the platform has overrun the volunteer moderators to a degree I struggle to imagine. Too often the people subjected to the abuse are told to make use of the tools for muting, blocking, and reporting rather than the user base as a whole acknowledging the problem is too widespread to place the onus of protection on the abused. People who do care are working hard on these issues, so there is hope. But there is a lot of work this community must do to make it a better place for everyone.
On the whole, I don't miss the bird site at all. I've learned what a toot is, I know where to find people, and I understand how the Fediverse works. As sappy as it sounds, I feel a smidgen of wonder with the internet again. A tiny bit of the sense I felt 20+ years ago as a teen giddily waiting for the dial-up squeals and squalling to establish a connection with the outside world.
