My journey of using twitter had a couple phases:

1. maybe it’s good to Follow the News and stuff
2. hmm, maybe not, but it’s got a couple more niche uses like tweeting about a conference as it happens
3. hmm, maybe not, well it’s a social network that some of my friends are on that’s less bad than Facebook
4. wait, no, it’s also for following people you don’t yet know and making friends

Phase 4 has been roughly 2020-present. It’s been the most fascinating by far! Thanks to the bird site, I have:

• met probably a dozen new people in person around Pittsburgh, locals and travelers
• gone to this camp thing twice?
• met at least one discord that I’m now quite active in which has been fun and exciting in its own right
• have a feed full of stuff like:
  • here are some fun ways to play with AI
  • school doesn’t have to be so blah
  • that parenting thing you’re going through, you’re not crazy
  • there’s a whole world in the images your mind creates
  • all sorts of wild things around psychedelics and meditation
  • all sorts of wild things about bodywork
  • perfume is fun
  • what if everything is latches in your blood vessels
  • you can do jhanas without decades of practice, probably

The best part about this is that it’s not even just like finding information about these things, it’s finding people who care about these things. I sort of know where to go to find out more about any of them.

but

I’ve also spent countless hours scrolling. It’s not the worst kind of scrolling, I’m good at avoiding that. But it’s kind of a time- and attention-sink. Especially because most of my tweeting is dumb jokes. is it worth it?

always finding my people

so here’s the thing. during the times in my life where I felt aligned with my work, I managed to feel part of a community. these were: college, grad school, and the first few years at stitch fix.

what did that look like? I knew:

• some people I admired
• who knew each other
• who also admired me

I crave this. We all do, but I think I have a higher need for it than most. I currently have a lot of great friends, but many of them don’t know each other, and all our life paths are sort of diverging in a sense where I’m often not inspired by the things that they are. Remote work adds to the isolation; kids do too, because all us parents are either running around keeping them alive, visiting family, or getting sick.

So Twitter, in the couple minutes here and there: is it a way to help find my people?

Well, yes, in a sense, in those connections I’ve made. But it’s also frustrating: after 5 years, I have met a few acquaintances. I thought maybe Vibecamp would help, meet them in person, but it’s only once a year, and so after the past two, I don’t think I’m going this year. Might be “stopping digging just before you hit diamonds” but also, idk, it feels like another big cost with low and uncertain payoff. (Ironically, it’d be nice if I lived in a place with a bunch of these folks and could have more regular meetups, like I did until 2022)

There’s also a parasociality to it. Part of this is, twitter publishes follower counts, so you know who’s “big on twitter” - you feel like you’re meeting a celebrity if their Number is much higher than yours. Extreme version of the Friendship Paradox. You’ll meet some old scene folks, and you can’t actually make friends with them because they’re quite naturally busy hanging with their other old friends.

So maybe that’s it: there’s this fantasy that I’m in a global ingroup (hah) where everyone’s more amazing than the next, which keeps it shiny and exciting, but I’m not actually building any community within it. To do so would require ongoing getting-to-know-people, which, idk, I can’t do one tweet at a time¹. (and is hard to do in Pittsburgh besides the mighty ~6 of us who live here, and it’s hard to take off work and baby care² to fly out to one-off events!)

So I’m building a global network of like-minded acquaintances. Which, don’t get me wrong, is incredibly cool. But there’s another need it’s not filling, and I wonder if I’m displacing finding that need.

I think it’s at least neutral; a lot of the “lost time” is little minutes in between here and there. But it does make me wonder.

meanwhile, I also need to perform

I get a kick out of making dumb jokes on the internet! I don’t know! I get very excited about this! I’m sort of embarrassed to admit it! But at least it’s all online and you can just not follow me if you find it grating!

side note: sigh, elon

much has been said about how this guy owns the site and aren’t I ashamed for still being there? no, any more than you should be ashamed for using facebook or amazon or oracle databases or u-line boxes. I can’t stand the guy, but we can’t live our lives based around “do I agree with the CEO of this product.”

is twitter different, because it’s warping my mind? I don’t think so; if I were doing twitter dumbly, sure, but I’m not, so getting off it for ideological reasons feels like throwing away your tv because some channels are fox news.

it does continue to spiral downhill, as a functioning website, though, welp