Fuck This Shit

What if Twitter were a coffee shop? I’d probably get my coffee somewhere else, because they’re thoroughly incompetent (bordering malicious). Recent references:

• One person’s history of Twitter, from beginning to end
• Twitter pauses verification process after controversy over Charlottesville organizer
• Fuck Twitter

Yet, Twitter is sort of the only coffee shop in town, unless you want to go to Starbucks (Facebook), where you’d run into acquaintances you don’t really care for. Luckily, coffee probably isn’t the best analogy here (this whole post is pretty messy to begin with).

For me, Twitter is an online vice. And can be compared to an old offline one: cigarettes.

Reading Twitter is my online equivalent of smoking. I know it’s not good for me, but it’s fun, it’s social, all the cool kids do it—and the more you get into it, the more addictive it becomes. The similarities even extend all the way up the corporate ladder: Both Twitter and tobacco companies are in the business of making money by keeping people’s bad habits alive.

Unreflected emotional outbursts play a key role here—only with cigarettes they’re supposed to be a sign of withdrawal, not of regular use.

One vice is enough and I’d rather have the occasional cigarette than a daily dose of clamor.

So: fuck this shit.