I talked about what it would take for me to leave Twitter a couple of years ago, but never followed up when I did leave around a year later. So here we go.

I didn’t quit in one go. I stopped posting. I checked in on my feed less frequently. I switched my account to private. I didn’t go cold turkey, I simply found fewer reasons to return.

I’d like to say that I was high minded and principled, that I quit because of Musk and Nazis and hateful content. But the truth is that the people I followed and blocked meant that my feed was mostly hate-free, an odd mixture of geeky stuff and dad jokes. Though I did leave because of the people and the content.

Twitter has never been a read-only medium for me. It’s all about the interactions, so when my community left, it was only a matter of time for me.

None of this is particularly original or unusual. I wanted to write something about my journey because I got a huge amount of value out of Twitter over the years.

There are people on there I’ve “known” for over a decade. Some I’ve ended up meeting in real life. Some I know almost nothing about, but I enjoy reading their words. A couple have died, and their loss has affected me in ways that I couldn’t have predicted.

What I’m saying is that closing my Twitter account was a strangely emotional activity. I left the account dormant for too long, willing things to get better even though rationally I knew it wasn’t going to happen.

Sadly, Twitter isn’t Twitter any more. Actually terminating my account was difficult but I can’t say I’ve missed it now that my account has gone. After all the build up, after all the time I spent on Twitter over the year, that’s both sad and surprising. Nothing is forever.