dana danger

(I’m writing this with full awareness that a person who publicly quits a site commits Flameout, a Class A misdemeanor.)

The Internet long ago replaced TV as the primary place where reason and decency go to die. It’s fucking poison, and Twitter is its concentrated form. No other web site has managed to distill the Internet into such vile tedium and hostility.

There are essentially three types of tweets:

1. LOLs: One-liners and YouTube links. “Number of times the word ’scrotum’ has been uttered in this office today: 11.” “omg lol: http://tinyurl.com/2w4apm“
2. Snark: Imagined superiority based on actually inconsequential reasons, expressed through sarcasm. “Tomorrow’s forecast is for partly correct spelling and a chance of Shut The Fuck Up.”
3. Pooping: Vapid bullshit about day-to-day existence. “Driving to work.” “Going to bed.”

Only LOL tweets have potential for value, but this potential is destroyed by their profusion. The Internet is teeming with a frustrating and cowardly unwillingness to take anything seriously, and the resulting abundance of humor is mind-numbing and wearisome. I’d be lying if I claimed not to like lolcats, but I’d be a mouth-breathing moron if that were the extent of my reading.

This reluctance to take ownership of ideas is almost certainly related to one of the Internet’s other defining characteristics: ferocious cruelty. Twitter is no exception here, and probably makes it easier to be mean; the 140-character limit makes it impossible to speak precisely, and the immediacy tempts the impatient and short-tempered. If a tweet allows any ambiguity whatsoever, the concept of “benefit of the doubt” is discarded, and the gaps are filled with whatever presumptions allow the reader to assume that the writer is an idiot and an asshole.

If Twitter is so awful, why did it appeal to me at all? For starters, it’s just a lovely web site: aside from the instability, the concept is well-executed, the site’s design is pleasing and usable, and the mobile device integration is really, really clever. However, I’m forced to admit that my attraction to Twitter only deepened because I’m a sarcastic, hateful, unoriginal coward. I used to be warmhearted, sincere and passionate. The Internet has slowly brought out the worst in me, and Twitter is the climax of this process: the bloated, rotting corpse of my disfigured personality.

I have a couple more reasons for quitting Twitter that aren’t more generally relatable to the Internet as a whole.

I’ve noticed a decline in the quality of my relationships with my Twitter friends. (I only have one Twitter friend that I didn’t previously know in “real life.”) The persistent social connection has an effect similar to cohabitating: when I’m constantly exposed to someone’s idiosyncrasies, it can make me hate them. It takes a little extra effort to manage an always-on relationship, which is fine until I multiply that effort by the number of Twitter friends I have (26, which is evidently low). I’ve also found that the constant updates make it extremely unlikely that I’ll want to catch up with someone or have a conversation of any real length. I already know what you’ve been up to, so at no point during the week do I say to myself, “I wonder what Megan is up to? I should email her/call her/have dinner with her.”

Finally (and perhaps most intangibly), using Twitter is a bit like being assimilated into a hive mind. My thoughts have taken on a different character. My brain is being trained to produce tiny musings that not only fit into the 140-character limit, but are things I’m willing to say in front of nearly everyone I know. My private thoughts and personal reflections are becoming rare.

So, ironically, here are my tweet-sized conclusions:

• I’ve imposed a 350-character minimum on comments.
• For now, I’m committing to not using Twitter for a month.
• I’m going to make a conscious effort to be sincere and take ownership of my interests, beliefs, and dreams.
• And most importantly, I’m going to relearn how to be kind to people.