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Well, it looks like it’s time for my 10th “quit Twitter” (senior editors at the FT are already preparing to tell me that their internal style requires us to call the site X.com, or X, to follow the new name, but that’s just not a good statement of intent. If I said I was quitting X, you’d assume I hadn’t decided what I was quitting yet, and would just fill in X later).
Moreover, no one who leaves Twitter from now on will call it X. If so, you are probably still happy where you are and not planning to leave. So, we are leaving Twitter. Of course, if you were foolish enough to ask why, we would answer that Twitter actually left us a while ago. By the way, under no circumstances should you ask us why we are leaving Twitter, because they will tell you, and it will not be in less than 140 characters. In any case, there is no need to ask, because they will tell you if you are leaving.
But the question is, is it finally time to quit? Elon Musk has given us several reasons to quit: he reinstated Donald Trump and Tommy Robinson, he said a civil war is inevitable in the UK and he made some very rude comments about Sir Keir Starmer.
So by all means, go ahead, but let me be clear: you can’t just leave. You have to announce your departure, possibly at length, explaining that what was once the greatest political party on earth is now filled with spiteful right-wing thugs, or angry left-wing thugs, or thugs whose political views are unclear but who are still angry and spiteful in other ways.
The good news is that you can do just that on Twitter: “Oyez, oyez, oyez (isn’t this the new congestion charge?), whoever you are, boasting 25,000 followers (at least 4,000 of which are not bots), on August 24th, I’ve decided to step back from the neighborhood. I’ll sneak back sometime in September.”
But you can’t just leave without saying a long, heartfelt goodbye. In your final post, you have to talk about how much you loved the place, the good friends you made there, the gossip, how central it was to your life, but that it’s worse off now than it was when you chose not to notice all the racism, misogyny, and insane bullying. You can’t just go quietly. You have to speak eloquently.
There are many great models for the final letter to send before quitting Twitter, but I recommend my own version from 2011, or the 2015 (or was it 2017?) version, where you at least recognized that you would probably cave in and come back soon. It’s not enough to just tell your followers where to find you from now on. Forget for a moment that you’re not Taylor Swift, that no one cares what social media you’re on, that we all expect you to come back. Put your heart and soul into it. It’s time to post “I had a dream.”
Recommendation
When Musk took over, I again considered leaving. Some of my Twitter folks (I know I should call them X folks, but that might sound like we’re at odds) announced they were moving to a site called Mastodon. I looked at the site, reserved the name Mastodon, but quickly realized that the site was trashy, unnecessarily nerdy, and would never be as successful as Twitter. Then I looked at the Facebook thread, reserved the name, but quickly realized that the site was trashy, not nerdy enough, and would never be as successful as Twitter. Now we have Blue Sky, which has a lot of people who agree with me, but is much smaller, less informed, and mostly very polite. Is that interesting?
Anyway, what could be better than watching fanatical idiots rage at each other and realize they don’t care who loses? This is the digital equivalent of bear bashing, except without the sympathy for the bears.
It’s true that X has a depressingly high idiot per capita ratio, but that’s true of a lot of places these days. Have you seen Love Island? X has now become a cesspool of racism, misogyny and anger, but then again, there must be an alternative to the Daily Mail.
So if you want to go, go, but make the departure enjoyable, make the departure long, in other words, prolonged.
Email Robert at magazineletters@ft.com
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