Why I left Twitter. Now I'm free!

Twitter. Yuck. Bleah. The place has become a toxic mire.

In 2012, I joined Twitter, because I was told it was a good place to promote myself. I gained over 10,000 followers and was heading for 11,000. The rules when I signed up said, "Always be kind and courteous." So I was.

In the last few years, there have been droves of people being absolute trolls, jerks, and taking offense at every tiny thing, to the point that everyone had to mince their words. Twitter didn't kick these scumbags off.

I began to realize that after every session on Twitter, I came off upset and frustrated.

There is a writing community there who lauds itself as extremely supportive. It's filled with self-proclaimed authors who laugh at procrastinating their writing. They have memes stating, "If you're a writer, you're on Twitter right now and thinking you should be writing." Another one was, "If you SAY you're a writer, then you're a writer." Most were not doing what it took to be a writer. These were also giving writing advice.

I've seen people upset over something, only to get attacked for no reason at all, save the attacker wanted to seem intelligent. There are long threads where people do nothing but fight. The only safe thing to do is talk about whether you like this kind of chicken or that, hate or love ice cream, go on long, pointless conversations about olives. If you're tagged in one of these asinine conversations and don't catch it right away, your notifications skyrocket and you can't find what's important.

If you do catch it, chances are, you're a slave to Twitter when you could be doing what matters, like writing, reading, spending time with your kid, and any other number of real things.

Twitter is supposed to be a platform for authors to promote their work, and yet those who do get branded. Some rats go so far as to tag the authors in a thread, telling everyone not to follow them because they promote their books. Who else will do it if not the author? Now they have a shameless self promo day that's extended into other days of the week. Nobody is selling anything. Some authors sell nothing for months.

They say, "Buy each other's books. If you buy someone's book, they will buy yours. Swap reviews."

This is not good in the least. This means you buy a ton of books, most of which will be truly crap, and you're obligated to give a five-star review for something you hate. Plus, you make none of that spent money up in royalties.

You end up knowing the author, which is bad, because if you happen upon a rat, this person has the potential to revenge review you. This means pinning a one-star review on your book because they're angry. What's worse is if the author is your friend and you don't like their book. What then? I've seen authors bemoaning what to do when this happens.

Now there are large groups of authors demanding five stars for everything they write, whether or not the work deserves it. They say, "If you're an author, you know how hard it is to write a book, so you should give everyone five stars." I've seen some crap books that look like rough drafts written in two weeks. Tons of five stars. They're Indie books, which means there were review swaps and these authors know each other.

It's a sickening cycle and if you get caught, you're trapped. I was trapped. I had to endure one stupid comment after another, wishing I could go back to what my Twitter used to be when I had 100 followers. My feed was full of beautiful pictures and lovely quotes. I fell into the world of numbers and "a follow for a follow" and "build your platform!" A platform of non-readers who will only buy your book if you buy theirs, and then never read it. Maybe they donate it to Goodwill. I can count on my fingers how many friends I made there.

Some of my friends started leaving Twitter and I felt left behind inside a chaotic cage without a door, and walls painted to look like I was outside. Some writers announced they were going to quit writing because they didn't see results and Twitter was mean. They didn't want to deal with that mess anymore.

The day I quit was the day I nearly got into an argument with a troll who've I've seen trolling other people. Maybe I should have blocked this person when I had the chance, but I think it was good I didn't. The person ended up being my Gollum. I'd already been attacked, I'd seen so much stupid it was driving me up the wall, and I was on the verge of snapping. I've never argued on Twitter, but I was ready to claw this wretch up.

I responded the first time, and I know Gollum responded to me, probably with some political garbage that had nothing to do with anything, but I didn't open the notification. I realized I was falling deeper down the Twitter hole. I was thinking dark things only a furious Apache could think, and knew this was wrong. My God didn't want me thinking these things, or feeling these things. What's more, Twitter is stupid. Why should I let some virtual reality that can go down any time ruin my entire life?

Instead of clicking on the notification, I went straight into settings and deactivated my account on the spot. As soon as it closed, the fury and anger got sucked away. I'd found the hidden door to the cage. I got out and I'm free.