I've been using Twitter for as long as I can remember. And I remember it well. A bunch of my livejournal friends had migrated to twitter, abandoning their home on livejournal for many reasons. Mostly due to privacy reasons once it was bought out.
I started Twitter in 2008. I used Twitter similar to how I used my livejournal. I wrote about my fandoms, ranted about life, wrote about my frustrations and shared any laughs with friends. I even made new friends along the way. It was fun, close-knit and while I have had disagreements with friends, we would often agreed to disagree or simply choose to part ways. Life on twitter was simple then.
Private twitter was and will always be a bliss.
While I was in Japan, I began this blog and I wanted to try my hand at gaining some public audiences.
A good move? Bad mistake?
I don't know, I honestly have to say it's a bit of both.
At first, I didn't truly un-private my twitter. I only added some Japan twitter folks to gauge the audience I was dealing with. My twitter friends then all lived in a different time zone and I wanted to find more people that tweeted in the same time zone I was. But I was cautious. After all, if the cesspool on reddit was anything to go by, twitter folks might be a shadow that follows behind their footsteps.
I was happy to find out that it wasn't...... well, at least not quite as bad. In fact, I found a lot of good honest folks that took life one step at a time, ranted when it got rough and we shared similar frustrations living in the same country. There was some series of confusion and heart wrenching moments, when people I thought I had good conversations with simply unfollowed me and disappeared without any closure (which I understand I am not owed, of course). But overall, it was still fun, lighthearted and easygoing.
So I thought, why not? Let's try this public twitter thing.
I geared up one of my dummy accounts I always had and reworked it to link it to my blog - which you all now know as "kansai_beyond", or some variant of it.
In timely fashion, I gained followers in no time. This was during the start of 2020, when COVID hit and everyone was stuck at home with not much else to do but to be online. I was finishing a leg of my trip in Kyushu after the new years so I had lots of photos to share, gaining the audience I needed. At the same time I was heading back to work, unsure of the situation that it would bring - a sentiment that was shared amongst everyone at the time. A common talking point. Lots of great conversations had happened then. Lots of uncertainty. Heartbreak. Shared frustration. The foreign communication in Japan seemed like a banded crew at the time and it was really nice...
...until the cracks started to show.
Being "friends" and "acquaintances" online isn't all that different from real life friendships and relationships at all. The only thing that's truly different is that you never get to the meet the people you tweet at face-to-face. And that there really is no true commitment to any online friendships you make. If you wanted, you can disappear at any time and at any moment. No one will be able to find you unless they really tried. But everything remains the same.
The popularity contests.
The two-faced individuals.
Those who talk too much and never listen (in this case, read).
The situations where shit hits the fan and then your mutual friends begin to take sides. Either against you, with you or not at all.
In this case, it was truly one where everyone went against this person all in the span of 24 hours. He had somehow finally arrived in Japan (all his mutuals were very excited and anticipating this with him), but he did not follow quarantine rules. Twitter turned on him so quickly. I wouldn't say I was heartbroken (again, it's online - there isn't the same commitment), but I was more shocked to see just one man get yeeted off twitter so fast. I wonder if any of those on twitter still remember this?
Then, those who nitpick on your choice words and expressions to pick a fight with you.
My personal favourite was the lady who saw my tweet and my photo of my breakfast at work and decided that this was her hill to die on.
Or the lady who thought I was trying to falsify the crowdedness of Osaka JR station to gain... sympathy?? Basically she thought I purposely took a photo of many people walking out of the train to demonstrate how crowded it was when honestly it's not that rare of a sight.
Then there's the trolls of course.
Now, it seems like that has snowballed into a lot of things being "not ok to tweet".
Somehow, even if you decide to be negative, even just a little (because life isn't always fair), someone will take offense to this.
I mute and block very generously these days. I even went back to private. But the way algorithms on twitter work these days doesn't give you 100% protection against the tweets and users you don't want to see. It seems like if you make a mistake liking a tweet that, was logical, other similar illogical tweets may follow suit. Or the simple fact that you liked that tweet, it will show you other tweets from different people that person follows (and those people aren't always the kindest).
Quitting X would be logical. But I really think I'm in it for the long haul. It just feels too lonely without it...