The Twitter is Dead. Long Live The Twitter

Why I've Decamped and Where I'll Wander to Next: An Excessively Long Answer to the Question "Where Can You Find Me Online?"

My friend Jenna Satterthwaite, author and agent, wrote a lovely piece on why she’s sticking with Twitter. What struck me was that her story of why she’s staying bears many similarities to my story of “Why I’m Not Really There Anymore,” albeit with a different ending.

Jenna shares the windfalls that Twitter blew her way, and it resonated with me, because I can say with certainty that there have been opportunities that would never have happened without Twitter. On a more nuanced, less direct level, Twitter is where I found a writing community and learned the ropes of a very weird industry, which has absolutely contributed to any success I’ve had in immeasurable ways.

For one—I have four Hugo nominations because of Twitter. (Oh, right—that’s four, now! Thanks to our community of listeners for the nomination!) Really—our Hugo nominated podcast Worldbuilding for Masochists was born of a delightful deep dive conversation on Twitter. My cohosts and I were, at that point, friendly but at a courteous distance and never would have come together to start a podcast without some intermediary bridging us—in this case, Twitter. Someone commented how they would listen to a whole podcast of the worldbuilding geekery we were spinning, and we paused and thought—well? Could we?

We could, in fact. Beyond the connections between the cohosts, many of our early guests came from connections on Twitter, too. In fact, when discussing potential guests, fairly often “we haven’t met in person but we’ve had good Twitter” was reason enough to extend an invite—and then, of course, we DID meet on the podcast and had wonderful chats and those networks broadened and deepened.

And that’s why I loved Twitter—believe it or not, it’s unusual to live close enough to other people writing the kinds of things you’re writing, at the same stage in publishing you are, who actually want to interact, especially when you live in Not The Big City. (I’m beyond the stars lucky to actually have a local and local-ish writer friends!) Twitter allowed me to meet other people, compare notes, joke around about “only writers get this” stuff, get support and encouragement, drop into the DMs with questions and commiseration, and eventually form camaraderie that broke Twitter containment and I can honestly say I have FRIENDS in the industry, which is wonderful for many reasons.

For one, yes, it’s great to have friends, period. The support on crappy days, the encouragement and shared joy when things go well—writing is a solo endeavor most of the time, but being able to share challenges and triumphs with people who get WHY it’s challenging and understand HOW BIG OF A DEAL achievements are that might seem unimportant carries some pretty hefty significance. Beyond that, however, this industry can be opaque, weird, and convoluted, and so being able to turn to others with “hey, have you ever heard of…?” and “does this pass the sniff test…?” and “is this good or not…” is actually pretty important, career-wise. Yes, we have agents. Yes, we trust them. Yes, we have access to plenty of information. Even with that, I doubt some of the injustices, ugliness, raw deals, and other nasties I’ve seen addressed and corrected (think scams and rights theft, not “canceling” anyone, FWIW), would have been raised to begin with without writer communities’ whisper networks…which were often formed because of or adjacent to Twitter. The conversations they spurred often played out with Twitter’s ability to rapidly crystalize and share information playing a role. Publishing/Writing Twitter, in short, was a space for informal but effective communication and collective action.

So leaving Twitter is a loss. It’s a big one. But whether I stay or go, I’ve lost the Twitter that fostered the benefits I extolled above. Spoiler: No, I’m not deleting my account, and I still occasionally post updates. If the ecosystem over there recovers, I’ll probably wander back. But I’m doubtful about whether the ecosystem will recover, and here’s why: If it ever was The Free Commons, it’s not anymore, and not for any political or ideological reason.

There’s a fascinating facet of the sci fi novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card* that usually gets left out of conversations (you know, in favor of talking about video games, indoctrination of kids, and intelligent bugs). Ender, who is hyper-intelligent, and his hyper-intelligent sister both end up celebrated thinkers in the environment known in the book as The Net—that is, a sci-fi internet parallel. And science FICTION it is, because the key ingredient for rising to the top and becoming a celebrated thinker in this version of the internet is actual thinking. The pragmatics of how, exactly, these proto-bloggers were reaching wide audiences remains a bit murky, but the idea is simple—genius rises to the top, is appreciated, and is even granted roles of leadership in the “real” world.

Card, clearly, built his proto World Wide Web without engagement-based algorithms. And further, he, bless him, never imagined The Net as a space of increasing commodification of consumer attention and “content” and “monetization.” In Card’s imagined Net, the best and brightest become the philosophes of an online generation; in our real internet, influencers convince legions of followers to buy their preferred brand of eye serum and copy dance moves. For any productive conversation about the internet we have to take place, we have to stop talking about it as though it’s the version we maybe should or could have. Basically, the idealistic vision of any of our social media spaces as The Commons where thought and discourse run free and rampant died a long time ago, and if we’re going to talk about whether it’s valuable to stay in online spaces, we have to grapple with that. Card didn’t get it wrong that the internet was going to be enormously influential, and that the conversations online would dramatically influence the real world, but he was optimistic in what kinds of influence and influencers would end up rewarded by the real Net. It’s not, as the Net of the book would suggest, an even playing field—or even one full of divots but at least accessible and traversable without breaking an ankle.

Nope, it’s carnies handing out giant teddy bears, as Cory Doctorow explains via his theory of “enshittification.” The various platforms of the internet have, according to Doctorow, enshittified over the years, first screwing over their users in favor of commercial interest and then screwing over commercial interest, as well, eventually becoming wastelands of useless garbage. No stumbling into the genius musings of modern-day philosophes here—hell, you can’t even see the stuff you actively signed up to see via following accounts. As Doctorow says, in Twitter’s “march to enshittification” they have leaned heavily into monetization tactics with results that suck for both the poster and the scroller: “The majority of people who follow you will never see the things you post. I have ~500k followers on Twitter and my threads used to routinely get hundreds of thousands or even millions of reads. Today, it's hundreds, perhaps thousands.”

I have far fewer Twitter followers than Doctorow, but I, too, noticed a sharp dive in engagement. People just plain do not see my posts anymore. Is that a big deal? Only in terms of personal measures of loss: Not only do my friends not see me being in prime “on my bullshit” mode, but I can’t use Twitter as a way to promote my own work anymore. This is frustrating, as authors are increasingly expected to maintain a social media presence, but that part is just a small blow to me personally—I was a never a big fish in the Twitter pond anyway, and my presence there never moved the needle on sales. For “official-ish” author posting (but also a lot of chickens, I can’t help it), I’m focusing my efforts on Instagram for now.

It’s the loss of larger community and connection that drove me from the platform. Whereas Twitter used to be the water cooler for publishing, where the important news (and the dishy gossip) got served out, those posts feel buried under junk I don’t care about, privileging users I don’t follow over those I do. I curated a list of accounts to follow on purpose, intentionally, carefully—enshittified Twitter tells me they know better and they’ll show me what they want me to see.

You could also actually engage and develop a rapport with people on Twitter “once upon a time.” This is still possible, but I don’t see posts from potential “new friends” very often, as the algorithm is favoring…I don’t know, blue check marks without any relationship to topics I follow, I guess. For this kind of socializing, I’ve decamped to Bluesky, which at least has the friendly, chatty vibe that lets you meet and greet a little like “the old days.”

Are any of these safe from the kind of platform implosion Twitter saw? Nope. Is any a solid replacement right now? Not really.

So what to do? Roll with the punches and get baby chicks, I guess.

*Yes I am aware of Card’s political stances over the years, no this is not an endorsement, yes it is taking an example of How We Thought About A Thing Before We Really Had The Thing from a widely known published work as an example, no you do not have to Read The Thing to understand the example.