It’s time to finally leave Twitter

I joined Twitter in 2009. I assume on a whim, infatuated as I was at that age by an internet that felt breathlessly inventive and utterly limitless in its possibilities. In comparison to the forums, rudimentary social networks and blogs I had grown up with (concepts that had begun to feel primitive during an era when accessing the web was easier than ever) Twitter felt exciting and new.

Twitter was immediately my kind of website. It was social, which was fast becoming the primary reason to spend time online. It was snackable, delivering bite-sized chunks of information in 140 characters or less. Best of all, it was addictive. Tweets were throwaway by design, easily consumed and capable of spreading farther as a result. Users no longer had to read lengthy forum or blog posts to stay in the know. Twitter allowed them to digest tens – if not hundreds – of tweets in the same amount of time. Not only was this baked-in immediacy compelling, the speed in which things could be seen and then thrown away only increased the possibility of engagement.

Suddenly, a tragically unfunny 16 year old could be provided with a steady drip of dopamine every single time they posted (it’s me, I was that 16 year old). The content didn’t matter as the novelty was still fresh. Likes would pour in regardless.

Knowing what I know now, as a 31 year old who was recently diagnosed with combined type ADHD, I never stood a chance. Half a decade before tech companies began to truly commodify attention, Twitter had already sunk its claws in deep. The site appealed to my under stimulated brain unlike anything else on the internet. It was more compulsive than forums, YouTube or online video games. It quickly became a permanent fixture of my life, a core part of my digital diet for the last 15 years.

I have tried to kick the habit. Believe me. Like clockwork, I reach some kind of imperceivable limit and delete the app from my phone with a grim determination that enough is finally enough. Four hours later I will log back in on my phone’s browser, just to make sure I haven’t missed anything. Three weeks will pass, and I will reinstall the app, accepting once again that my fool proof plan is anything but.

Recently, I have taken to installing blocking apps that physically prevent me from accessing the site itself. This has proven more successful in the sense that I no longer look at Twitter on my phone, but they’re powerless in stopping me from spending hours doom scrolling on my PC or work laptop instead. It’s no use. I just can’t stop.

I don’t want to use the word addiction to describe my relationship with Twitter because I don’t think it fits. Compulsion feels more apt. To veer into millennial parlance for a moment (I am not above it) it makes my brain fizz and keeps the horrors quiet. It has comfortably filled those gaps in-between obligations, activities and social niceties that I find particularly agonising. Cutscene in a game? A quiet lull in a group conversation? A short lift ride to a higher floor? It’s scrolling time, baby!

Twitter has never offered me any kind of positive respite, though. Not really. Even before the site’s current owner came in and made everything substantially worse, Twitter was always rife with abuse. Granted, its role as the internet’s town square was hugely important during key moments in recent history, but it was always filled with bad actors spouting the worst opinions you’ve ever heard in your replies. The only difference in 2024 is that the site no longer cares about moderating those voices, choosing instead to amplify them for a small monthly fee.

I think I just crave peace. I crave a void I can scream into that does not echo back. I think I want to teach myself how to formulate full thoughts again, rather than spouting them off in single sentences to gain that immediate hit of dopamine as quickly as possible.

I think I need to delete Twitter.

I also think it’s time to finally reassess my relationship with the internet in general, especially when it comes to games. In November 2008, I started a blog to write about the games I was playing at the time, and haven’t really stopped talking about them publicly since. Over the course of 16 years via blogs, YouTube and Twitter, I began to think about games less as interactive experiences and more as a means to generate content.

Slowly but surely, I poisoned my hobby in an effort to make it a career to the extent that when I finally did enter games media full time, the novelty wore off faster than I thought possible. I was so fixated on having so many interesting things to say about games that I forgot about what made me love them in the first place. By the time I left RPS in 2023, I genuinely couldn’t remember the last time I had played a game for its intended purpose of rest and relaxation. Games were a way to generate precious views. What angle should my review take? What guides can I produce? How can I give this thought a YouTube friendly title and thumbnail?

It’s a fucked up way of thinking about something that once gave you joy as a child, but how can you not when those metrics suddenly determine whether or not you can pay your mortgage?

Saying this, I am grateful to have walked away with Indieventure, a creative project that isn’t driven by views or validation. Thanks to my wonderful co-hosts who regularly demand I work less, Indieventure has done a lot to re-establish my relationship with games. We have no targets to hit, no bosses to please. Our only goal is to make each other laugh, or to recommend a cool thing we’ve been playing, and that’s it. It’s nice. You should go and listen to it immediately.

That leads us here. I no longer want to waste my time on social media. I want to rethink my relationship with games. I can’t quit cold turkey (because I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, in some small way, enjoy both of the things I’m shitting on so heavily in this post) so I’ve decided to try something new instead.

Reader, he’s made a blog.

Well, retooled an old one, I suppose. I never really knew what to do with this website, which for a long time has served as a useless repo for my YouTube videos and a sort of half-arsed news site that I picked up and then abandoned during the pandemic. Inspired by Ashley Day and Alex Wiltshire‘s recent appearances on The Back Page podcast, in which they both talked about their own personal sites, I figured it would be nice to do something similar.

I miss blogging! I miss writing for the sake of writing, chewing on a thought and letting it digest, rather than shoving it into a limited container and launching it into the screaming, slathering maw of (shudder) discourse the second it pops into my head.

Also – and I feel a bit weird saying this I guess – I am finally done chasing a full-time career in games media. I tried it! I didn’t like it! I spent sixteen years attempting to prove something to myself (and probably my parents if I’m being brutally honest) and doing so didn’t make me happy. I want to reclaim that passion. I want to write and create things for me, and I want them to be stored somewhere that I own and won’t be used to train some AI LLM because we live in the future and the future is hell.

So. Hello? Welcome to my blog. I will post when I want to about whatever I fancy talking about. Thanks for being here, or more likely, not being here.

This is my void. It’s made just for me.

In publishing this (too long) post, I have made a a promise to myself that I will delete my Twitter in a few days time. For good.

Fifteen years is too long to stay in one place, I think. It’s finally time to move on.

Any spelling mistakes, grammatical errors or badly phrased sentences in this post are all intentional. Cheers.