Twitter, Mastodon - and the seven stages of grief

As the hunger/squid games rage on at Twitter HQ, there's a large amount of folks who use the site who are curious as to whether or not there will be a site left for them to tweet on come year end. Others are more certain that the site will continue to exist, but are unsure what kind of changes (both technical and spiritual) might be implemented that might make Twitter an unwelcome or unsavory place for them. 

I'm one of the folks half-heartedly exploring other options, but we can discuss more about that later.

Today's topic is the psychological impact of leaving a social media site.*

I have a bit of experience with this sort of adventure - as I spent a good six or seven years hanging out with the community of folks over imgur.com.

I had a great time shitposting, visiting local landmarks, and earning hundreds of thousand of fake internet points. I got to "know" (as much as you can on a semi-anonymous internet site) a number of the well known folks on the site, and I felt like a rock star for carving out my little niche for my 15 megabytes of fame. There were anonymous Secret Santa events - folks buying other folks in need pizzas, or what have you, and it was generally a civil and jovial place to hang.

Don't get me wrong - there was the occasional shitstain that would show up there and cause grief by generally being an unrepentant douche canoe - but the mods were generally good about wielding a mighty banhammer with aplomb and occasionally - panache. 

It was even more exciting when real actual famous people like Troy Verner (RIP) and Adam Savage joined the site; it was all pretty neat - and it took up a good portion of my social media time.

And this was all well and good - as the site was being funded by VC angels or maybe powered by unicorn farts or something, but with a couple notable exceptions - the servers were fairly stable and available for the community to interact with (& mostly shitpost).

Then - slowly and almost imperceptibly at first - the community began to change. I suspect that this was around the time that the imgur team wanted to grow the site, potentially take it public, and start getting that sweet sweet ad revenue that they were hearing that the facebook and twitter folks were filling their diamond encrusted swimming pools with. 

And suddenly the mods started multiplying and swinging the banhammer at folks who were behaving the way that they had become accustomed to behaving for the previous 10 years or so. For me - I've always believed in using spicy language where it is warranted. As Mark Twain would say: "Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." I'm just not so sure that the circumstances need to be so explicitly desperate or urgent. 

I will occasionally drop an f-bomb or even <gasp> use the c-word - if the situation calls for it. And when shitposting - there's usually an occasion. 

Now the imgur terms of service don't actually mention anything about profanity (aside from hate speech - which is profane - albeit under a slightly different definition of the word) and as such I would regularly find myself using the appropriate word for the appropriate situation.

My account would get suspended or banned, and I'd have a polite (& profanity free) conversation with a mod to get the account unlocked. And it would normally take this whole interaction a couple of days to play out. 

Each time that I would go through this - it was more and more stressful. There was an ever increasing kind of "this-place-has-become-a-lot-less-fun-sort-of-place-to-hangout-and-shitpost-in-kind-of-vibes-to-it" feeling that was making me feel more and more uneasy.

It was a great place to post funny memes, comment on them and interact with a generally irreverent but caring community. (Still is a great place for memes - I suspect that many of the things that made the community good are still in place, but the place had ceased to be fun anymore.) More than that - it was as source of ever increasing agitation and anxiety - something that few people need more of.

So, with great trepidation - I pulled the plug on my account - deleted all posts and comments. (To the credit of the folks at imgur - it was a single button to delete all content irrevocably** - with a couple "Are you really, really sure?" dialog boxes before executing that command.) 

Then I deleted the app from my mobile devices. And waited for what came next  

And then - it was quiet.

At first - there was a bit of an initial shock, as I was certainly used to pulling out the app or pulling up the website to see what kind of whacky imgur shenanigans were afoot. Then, of course, I felt that a certain amount of denial - mostly being not able to shitpost, and subsequent anger that I was currently not shitposting. I tried bargaining with myself - maybe see if I wanted to open a new account and start over, and depression when I assured myself that it just something that I was going to have to live without.

Finally - after a long while - there I had some acceptance that the community was not going to be a part of my life going forward. 

There was a legitimate sense of loss, and I do think that in these sorts of cases - one does has to process that in the same sort of way of other sorts of losses.

I tried some other sites to try to fill some of the gap that I had from imgur.

tumblr: Nope - too weird for me.***

twitter: sure - already had an account - allowed me to channel some of my need to shitpost

reddit: seemed like a not bad idea - imgur was like reddit's younger step sibling. Immense amount of interests and insular groups (subreddits), did manage to find a couple of corners to squirrel myself away in, and occasionally shitpost for imaginary internet points.

Here's what I learned:

Manage Expectations: If you're going to migrate to another site - that's fine, but don't expect it to be everything that the old site was to you. It won't have the exact same community****, it won't have the exact same features, and it probably won't fill the gaping void in your soul that was torn out as you left the previous site. (This is also probably not a bad thing, all things being equal - which - of course - they are not.) 

Try Leaving - At Least Short Term: If belonging to a social media site is causing you anxiety or depression - consider just disconnecting from it for a while - maybe permanently if that works out. (If it's your family or IRL friends that are causing you the anxiety - this might be a bit more tricky, and may require the expertise of a therapist. Or an exorcist.) 

Try critically examine what is missing: The experience at Reddit certainly wasn't the same as it was on imgur - the site was immensely bigger - the community not as small or interwoven. (I expect that there are some subreddits that might have similar cohesion/community, but there's far too many rabbit holes to get lost in over there - some of which are hella toxic.)

Now I told you all that so I could tell you this:

I'm getting that same kind of "this-place-has-become-a-lot-less-fun-sort-of-place-to-hangout-and-shitpost-in-kind-of-vibes-to-it" from Twitter.  Additionally - due to  my job - I also find that Twitter (was) immensely valuable from an infosec perspective - since it's a great way to share (or harvest)  information rapidly about emerging threats. So I definitely need a replacement site/service and the general consensus from the infosec folks is to head on over to some Mastodon instance or other. 

It's a different interface and experience, and in all likelihood, will not be a complete replacement for what I was able to get from Twitter. 

I still use reddit - both as an information source and an outlet for my innate need to shitpost but it takes far less of my spare time than imgur ever did. And I see that as a positive thing. 

But more and more it looks like twitter might not be around for much longer - and if it is, there is a definite possibility that it won't really be the type of place that the cool kids are going to want to hang out on anymore.

If you do find yourself wondering if you will be able to move forward without twitter providing you with your daily dopamine surge  - I suspect that you'll be okay so long as you manage your expectations, try leaving twitter at least short term, and try critically examining what is missing.  

(Although I would keep the therapist and exorcist in your pocket as a solid plan B and C respectively.) 

* I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist or licensed therapist, nor do I play one on TV. I'm just providing my observations on my own behavior in past experience. Your mileage - if any - may vary.

**It is possible that there is an archive of all my shitposts and comments somewhere over on imgur - although there's nothing exceptionally sensitive, concerning or even funny that would be there - if we're being completely honest. 

***The one exception is the tumblr posts that get screenshotted to imgur/reddit/twitter. Generally speaking - those are pure gold - I just found that I wasn't willing to to the panning to get to those

****Since folks are emigrating en masse to mastodon - there's a good chance a significant subset of your community will actually be over there.