My Twitter Journey
I own a tee from Threadless which says “Twitter is the messaging system we never knew we needed until we had it” in blue curved font. Underneath is a tiny bird, better known as the Twitter icon.
I first started out on Twitter in freshman year, just like many of my WKWSCI peers. What began as part of an assignment for the introductory module COM201 turned into a growing fascination with this social media animal. Suddenly it made less sense to write long, descriptive prose when 160-character-long thoughts were all it took to update someone three seats away during a lecture that no one was paying attention to.
The Twitter community grew swiftly, with each new member not wanting to be left out of this growing fad. I remember Regina and I pestering Edwin to get a twitter account until he finally relented and then we got to badger him not only in real life but on social media as well.
So Twitter had found its way into my life and nested itself, stealthily and silently, into my arsenal of social networking sites (and consequently, the bookmarks bar on my Safari browser.) Twitter became the go-to for updates because it was still more niche than Facebook - more private, if one can reconcile using such a word to describe a microblog.
There it stayed, for two years. It was a good companion to have. Members of Iranian Productions bantered across our Twitter feeds as we all listened to the Trippy Playlist I had made while banging out our COM206 report. On the one fateful afternoon when Liz, Eve and I got tipsy with our hip flasks at the back of a COM206 lecture, our real and virtual toasts were evident across the Twitter timeline. Twitter was an ally on lush summer vodka-spiked nights, and where verbosity went to die in the face of cryptic evasive entries.
There came a point, not long before I purchased aforementioned t-shirt, that Twitter became a mainstay in real life as well. When I bought my first smartphone, mornings on the MRT train would be spent scrolling through my feed on the way to school, just so I could be kept updated on the shenanigans of so-and-so.
It is not a point of my life I am proud of, something I realised near the start of the year one innocuous day at work, when I also came to the startling realisation that despite keeping me informed, Twitter was not keeping me happy. And it was not really an interest in other people’s lives that kept me on Twitter, only a morbid reluctance to be left out of the loop.
Twitter, I decided, would have to go. I took a (mental) deep breath and deleted the app from my iPad, while simultaneously doubting my ability to stay off my timeline. And while I will not claim it was instantly liberating, the subsequent days have shown that it’s really no loss.
When I go back on Twitter now, once every few days, it’s out of curiosity at what the rest of the world is doing with their lives. Yet every time I go back on, it’s sickening to note the level of self-indulgence I used to be a part of, even embrace. Perhaps eventually, I will rid myself of Twitter altogether. For now, it’s no longer on my bookmarks bar, and no longer in my history.
Little baby steps.
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