I Finally Quit Twitter, I Think
Still working through those post-election feelings, my friends
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I finally quit Twitter.
At least, I think I did. About a week before the election, I realized, finally, that I was never going to find a tweet that made me feel better, and that all of the in the moment commentary was only making me more anxious, more irritable, meaner. There is probably value in having the first draft of history written down somewhere, but I find the certainty people feel comfortable expressing in the moment galling. Even the tone of those calling for nuance, lamenting the state of discourse on the website set my teeth on edge. At best we’re all in a defensive crouch, preemptively lashing out. At worst we’ve climbed atop our own pedestals, completely unaware of the cracks we created with each step.
Of course, it’s not just Twitter. Even though I haven’t been back since before election day, I can feel the contours of its discourse bleeding through into my podcasts and online communities, all the places where people gather to talk about politics, I can feel the anger and fear and dismissiveness.
But talking about the discourse, about the state of our politics, about the future of the Democratic Party and the future of campaigns, about what block of voters did what and which category needs the most outreach, about who did what wrong and when - all of allows us to put distance between ourselves and the lives at stake. It allows us to obscure the very real tension in the knowledge that forging community, reshaping our politics, and rebuilding government as a force for good in people’s lives will mean reaching out to and working with actual people, rather than concepts, whether or how they voted in the 2024 election. And that the decisions we make are not abstract - every shift in priorities, every shift in tone, changes who and how we’ll be able to help. And so very many people are going to need help.
I’m trying not to turn away from it, but it’s hard.
Even before we knew the results of the 2024 election, I knew I needed to change my relationship with politics. After Trump won in 2016, I felt like I couldn’t have any boundaries. Politics bled into every aspect of my life, and I bled right back into my politics. Trump was an immediate, urgent threat, and we needed all hands on deck. In some ways, this was good - it focused my anxiety and fear into action, action that made a difference. It propelled me out of my comfort zone and into a broader community of activists and campaigns. I made new friends, I helped win critical elections and pass key legislation. But it was also penance - I missed something, about my country and about myself, and I had to let everything in until I figured it out.
In some ways, Twitter was a really important part of reconsidering my priors, of taking off the rosy colored, West Wing glasses of my youth and grappling more deeply with the realities of our country, not just the racism and the bigotry and the violence, but also with the more banal reality of politics. There are no political heroes. You cannot put your faith in a system. Sometimes, people will surprise you and do the right thing. Sometimes, people will disappoint you. Sometimes you show up, and you do the work, and you leave everything on the field and you still lose. Life doesn’t have a narrative arc, it just has people, waking up every day and deciding what to do next.
Trump is an acute threat - to the lives of millions of people here, to the future of our climate and our ability to live on this planet, and to the flawed yet beautiful democracy we’re trying to build. But more than that, this second Trump term is a reminder to me that this is where we live. As much as I said it before and as many times I’m sure I’ll say it again, I am not sure I’d ever really internalized that there are no permanent victories in politics. There is no fucked/not fucked binary. There is only the space we make to do good, and the good we do, every single day. And sometimes that will be big and bold, like the biggest investment in addressing climate change in history, or the legalization of gay marriage. Sometimes, it’ll be exceptionally hard, like the eight months of relentless calls and protests it took to convince John McCain to vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act. And sometimes we’ll lose, like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act or the 2024 election.
My absence from Twitter now means I miss stuff. It means there are a lot of conversations about politics and priorities and what we do next that I can’t participate in. I have a lot of random thoughts rolling around in my brain and nowhere to put them. I’d also gotten pretty good at getting validation from my little corner of Twitter, which buttons to press to get the surest hit of dopamine. I miss the connections I made, both fleeting and lasting. And in some ways, I miss the lack of boundaries. It was easier to stay on top of things when it took all my focus, when news and conversation were happening right before my eyes. I have to be more deliberate about it now. I have to look for news, read the whole article. I have to dig deeper to find a different perspective. This is a net good, when I do it. But, I’ll be honest. Sometimes I don’t.
It’s been less than a month since the election. Trump isn’t even president yet. It’s perfectly fair for all of us, me included I keep reminding myself, to take a break - to rest and read and knit and cook and see friends and go on trips and be a real fucking person. If this is where we live, if this is not an urgent and immediate fight to the death, but an acute chronic condition, then there’s nothing for it but to live, to take breaks and have parties and do our laundry, to make space in our lives to do good for the world, for our neighbors, and also for ourselves.
But without Twitter to tell me what to care about, to keep me in the loop, to put politics at the forefront of every day, I know that I’m going to need to make the space for it myself, to seek out the pain that people are experiencing, the hard conversations about our next steps, and the discomfort of not knowing the answer, of disagreeing with people I respect and/or care about.
Which is why I’m so grateful for all of you, and for this space I built where I can work through politics and the news in long form, where I can put to metaphysical paper the arguments I keep having in my head, without Twitter to exorcise them. In the next year I’m hoping to build a little more conversation into it, and I hope you’ll share your thoughts with me and with each other.
More practically, without Twitter it’s going to be a lot harder for people to find this newsletter. Most of you found me because of Twitter, whether you know it or not (most of you found me via connections I made there), so if you like it in general or if a specific piece resonates with you, please share it! A decent number of you subscribed after the election, and I joked with friends that I was afraid that people were coming to this newsletter because of its title, expecting me to have some sort of answer. I’m afraid I don’t have that, but I’m a regular person, same as you all, trying to figure out how to make the space to do good, and to fight for people I care about, and I’m hoping we can do that together. I’ll share what I’ve got, and I hope you’ll do the same.
Let’s do this, together.
Actions to Take This Week
Call your Senators and your Representative and tell them yes, we do need the Department of Education, thanks! While it’s unlikely that this bill can pass the Senate, even with a Republican majority, you never know what shenanigans Republicans in Congress will get up to, so let’s make our voices heard on this one. I made a guide to calling Congress in case it helps!
Things that Give Me Hope/Strength This Week
That margin is closing y’all. The more votes California counts, the smaller it gets. Trump did not win a majority of voters in this election, he does not have a mandate to do whatever he wants, and there are so many of us fighting for a better country and a better world.
From Climate Action Now: “It’s far from the top story of the 2024 U.S. elections, but it’s worth noting that voters across the country strongly approved a wide range of efforts to protect and expand state-level leadership on climate action and resilience.” This includes ballot measures in California, Colorado, Rhode Island, Louisiana, Maine, and Minnesota.
Good for you! I should add that there is another, fundamental reason to quit Twitter for Bluesky/Substack that people seem to miss. (beyond Trump, Twitter/X political sympathies, and censorship, and propaganda). In Substack/Bluesky you own your audience, while in Twitter you don't. Twitter owns them. The moment you quit, you lose all your contacts. Here it is different. I just wrote about it: https://4two.substack.com/p/how-to-own-your-audience
Great as always