I’m at a crossroads with Twitter. The relationship was practically love at first sight. I held her hand tight back when my former colleagues in the newsroom mocked me for all our fun. They didn’t get us. They thought we were stupid. This was before promoted Tweets, before news outlets felt obligated to tease us with outlandish questions, before everyone tried to prove their cleverness every 140 characters.
Twitter now is crowded. And the shouting voices with their endless questions and frequent nonsense only got louder during the political campaign. Then you watch the followers you casually talk sports with turn hyper-partisan and you wonder if politics is simply another game for them to win.
I tried blocking out some of the noise by setting up notifications for just a couple of key people I wanted to hear from as Election Day approached. But then the phone buzzes or bings or does both so much, you feel like Twitter is trapped in your head.
I tried starting a few casual conversations about non-controversial stuff, but then hardly anyone answered. You’re mumbling publicly to yourself. In fact, I’m not sure how many of us are actually part of the conversation. I feel we are more like a million people wandering the streets, talking out loud, hoping someone might actually once in a while say hi.
Look. I’m not saying it’s over. Each time I try to close Twitter out, I reach for her again. But she annoys me more than ever before and we’re going through a rough patch. I’d like to make it work, but the nagging, the questions, the broken promises of good content. She’s just not the same.