Elon Musk has dedicated himself to run Twitter into the ground as quickly as possible. So why not rethink how you interact with the platform? Our old pal Ed Zitron wrote a couple of Twitter focused posts that get to the heart of how to make Twitter less of an anxiety factory.


First, the responsibility for how people consume Twitter (or any content) cannot be outsourced:

People have fundamentally broken their brains by giving up any responsibility for the content they consume.

and

I think people have given up a layer of responsibility when it comes to their own consumption. By all means quit something if your immediate reaction is “ah man, this sucks.” But if you’re on Twitter for hours and hours a day and then decide to quit because everyone’s depressing, maybe the issue is that you’re following the wrong people and willingly dipping your head in a septic tank.


Second, posting to any platform has effects:

Cancel culture is known by another word - consequences - and if you are going online and making posts that hurt people, yes, there are consequences, and expecting there not to be is stupid

and

You’re not doing anyone a service by forming a half-assed opinion on something that you barely know about, and you’re probably hurting yourself in the process.

Written on January 16, 2023