I Don’t Want to Use Twitter or Medium in the New Year
I like Twitter and Medium a lot. I like writing and discovering on both platforms. I don’t hate them, and I’m not leaving them angrily.
It’s just that they’re both designed as public stages meant for short-term consumption. And both parts of that equation don’t really line up with my interests anymore. I can easily discover what one thousand different people think about any topic, but that’s not really a goal of mine. And I can read bite-sized tweets or short-form essays for one thousand years without any repeats, but that’s not a goal of mine either.
I’d happily ignore every single person on Twitter and Medium, despite all the great jokes, insights, analysis, advice, trends, and stories, and replace them with a single book from a single author. At this point, I’m not looking for breadth, I’m looking for depth. I don’t want a 12 quick essays, I want deep thinking about a single thing.
I don’t need to scroll through everyone’s anguish, or anger, or excitement, or cynicism, or joy, or disappointment all the time. Or a little bit of the time. Do I ever need to? I’m not so sure.
I don’t need Twitter or Medium to recommend great content to me, throwing me off my stride with a catchy headline when I’m just trying to write something. It happens every time, which means the products are working as intended. But it’s frustrating to realise I’ve delayed writing because I opened six tabs with other people’s voices, drowning out my own. It happens a lot.
I’m going to move my writing over to a personal domain, and I’m going to curtail my Twitter usage. I’ll still use both sites for discovering content and I’ll use Twitter to reply to people online. But in the New Year, I’m going to change how I create and consume content online.
