I have stopped using Twitter for about a week now. The reason why I’m using “stop” instead of “quit” is because I didn’t remove my accounts. In fact, the whole system is still there, I just simply deleted the Twitter application on all of my devices. I think by making my move ambiguous, I may really leave Twitter for a long time. This is not the first time I have gone cold turkey. I have quit Twitter several times in my life, and it never worked. I usually came back after several days.
Twitter played a vital role in my life. I have used this social medium since 2011. It was literally the only way at the time for me to connect with the rest of the world when I was in China. It helped me to get the latest uncensored information. I could meet people I would have never been able to otherwise though Twitter. The most important part was Twitter let me throw myself into a pure Japanese native environment. That’s the secret ingredient that made my Japanese authentic since the beginning.
Then, look at what I was doing on Twitter nowadays. Keeping up with the Joneses, showing off my status and maintaining a circle that didn’t help. I was spending hours and hours on this platform, only making my life more miserable. Even my way of using Twitter had been really sophisticated. For example, I don’t argue political stuff with strangers and will block whoever makes me uncomfortable unless we have met in reality. However, things went down anyway.
The problem was despite investing a huge amount of resources to Twitter, the return was negative. Time was wasted, energy was exhausted and the mood was destroyed in which I got nothing. After I made the decision to stop using Twitter, my life has instantly improved. I have more time to do everything else. Not only the time I took back, my concentration, I started to actually listen to professors’ talks, which I had not been able to for years.
It feels like the character Jon Snow from Game of Thrones being stabbed to death at Castle Black. Every part of mine was involved in “murdering” Twitter and they are happy about the results.