The Seven Stages of Leaving Twitter

Stage 1. It will be all right if I stay. I’ll keep to my little panda/kid lit bubble. The trolls and fascists won’t find me there.

Stage 2. Hmmm…maybe I should set up an account on another social media site. Post? Hive? What’s this Mastodon thingie?

Stage 3. Remove Twitter app from my phone. Only access through the browser. If it’s inconvenient enough, maybe I won’t go on there so much. Ha! As if!

Stage 4. Okay. This is getting really creepy. Elmo* is inviting TFG back on, not to mention all these people who got kicked off for taking part in trying to over throw the government. Maybe I better go through my followers and weed out the dodgy looking ones…wow…there are a lot of them.

Stage 5. Set account to “Protect my Tweets” (Is that private? I don’t see anything that says ‘Private’) Set up two-factor identification. Change password. Log out. Log back in to see if I got the password thingie right. Log out again.

Stage 6. Join Mastodon. Start posting on Mastodon. Follow some people. Hey, lots of cat pictures here. They need more pandas, but hopefully we can fix that! Quickly sneak on and off Twidder to see if any of my friends left me a DM. Leave a DM about where they can find me on Mastodon. Log off of Twidder. Think it would be nice if it was called Heffalump. Talk a couple of people into coming over to Mastodon. Consider closing out my Twidder account completely. Hesitant, because Liz Climo follows me and while she probably never actually sees my stuff, I can pretend that the ‘toons make her laugh and she thinks Pinky is really funny. Wonder if I am getting annoying about trying to herd people over to Mastodon. I’m just going to call it Heffalump.

Stage 7. (current stage) Read about all the abusive content that is starting to get posted on Twidder. Yes, from right wing fascist trolls, but more importantly from Elmo himself. It’s really bad. Read article on Empty Wheel, one of my favorite follows on Twidder…oh good, she’s come over to Heffalump. Consider at what point to totally divest myself of Twidder…Stay ‘Tooned.

Or maybe I should just join Poot’er…

*Obviously I’m not talking about Elmo the Muppet.

I’m not trying to tell you what you should do…

I only know that for me, knowing what little I do about my family history, that Twidder is no longer a safe space for me to be in. I’m getting quite the 1930’s Germany vibe and it’s making me want to find the secret attic to hide in. You can find me here (unless Elmo tries to buy this too. He made a joke about that and it sent chills down my back.)(Please don’t sell it to him, okay?)

Among all the other worst things he is doing, he has thrown a flaming torch into the middle of what has become a very efficient message center for people who are trying to share accurate health information, get voting information out, protect rights of people who are marginalized in this country for their race, their religion, for who they love, and who they identify as. He is aiding the spread of lies and dangerous information. He is putting people at risk.

I have to remind myself, I am not leaving several thousand “real” followers. Maybe a hundred or so, more or less, of people that I actually interact with, another 50-ish that I get news from, and many of them are already on Heffalump. As a marketplace of ideas, it has been getting more difficult to wade through, and more nights than not, sends me down the hole of despair after so compulsive Twidder doom scrolling.

So this is where I leave it. I am at the very least going to not post on Twidder, and only sneak in to check my direct messages. Maybe I will get kicked off. Maybe the whole thing will go up in flames.

But you can always find me here, and of course, over at The Panda Chronicles. I hope you’ll join me on Heffalump. Did I mention all the cat photos?