Hi geeks! While I’ve been updating my fitness gaming journey regularly on here, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve shared an opinion piece. Hopefully by the end of this post, so eloquently titled WTF is Happening With Twitter?, I will have explained some concerning things about the bird app.
TLDR? I quit
As of today, Cuteek will no longer be using or reading Twitter. All posts can now be found on the YouTube community tab at YouTube.com/cuteek and here on the blog. I appreciate all of you support. 💖
Is Elon Musk buying Twitter?
Elon Musk and Twitter are basically like the Ross and Rachel of the social media world. It’s the big will they won’t they, that some people honestly don’t care about and others like myself see huge red flags. Many of the people I follow on Twitter also follow Mr Musk and I did too up until a little while ago when I saw some very concerning comments he was making about the war. He likes to poke the bear and he’s said publicly that Donald T-ump didn’t deserve to be banned from Twitter, that he should only received a time out. He also egged Kanye West on a few days ago who was spouting anti-Jew hate, who has since been put on time out.
Now whatever your political views, I know what mine are and if a social media platform allows things like inciting violence then it’s not something I want to be part of. There is having an opinion on something, but there’s also the basic right and wrong.
Many say that Musk is all talk, but let’s not forget the power that comes along with potentially owning such a huge platform. Long time readers of this blog will know that a while back I quit Instagram for this blog as I don’t support their values. You can read the whistleblower reports for yourself, they knew the app was increasing anxiety and self harm in teens! As someone who has a family history of mental illness leading to suicide including my own sister, I don’t want to be around such toxicity.
I did quit twitter for a while last year, to return in May 2022 this year, my old twitter handle @cuteek had been taken by someone else and I had to restart. As someone who works from home as a digital marketer, my notes don’t lie (is that a Shakira song?) and I’ve been a lot less productive in my work since I’ve had the distraction of my blog’s twitter. There’s been a definite dip since May. Along with my marketing job I was also a full time content creator, which was exhausting to say the least. The effort into being funny, going viral and making memes for Cuteek was zapping away the content juice that I should have been putting into my digital marketing work in tourism. So last month I decided I was going to do Cuteek content creation for fun instead of trying to get to a certain amount of followers on twitter or make YouTube partner.
But what happened next? I’m not exactly sure but I posted a funny tweet and it got a few likes, then a few more, feeding my brain with dopamine that is like a delicious chemical, especially to those of us with un-medicated ADHD. It happened again, then I got some new followers and got distracted big time. My small-ish twitter account began to grow again, not massively but enough for me to soak up the attention I was getting.
What about Discord?
At some point in this dopamine high I decided to get back into Discord with the notion that if Twitter disappeared suddenly or changed drastically with Elon Musk’s ruling that I would be able to find everyone I interacted with on the bird app and maintain contact. I joined a few Discords and I must say that people have done an amazing job creating communities and I appreciate the invites I got. Still on a high I thought I could create my own discord… my brain convinced I could keep all of this up along with the content creation AND my busy job in marketing…. for now I have connected with friends but have yet to make a server. Don’t forget I also have a newsletter, so many things to update for a hobby….😆
What next? I moved my personal work Twitter contacts over to Cuteek too because who has time for another account? Maybe the marketing contacts would also appreciate my humour and baboom…. more followers, more happy chemicals. It felt a bit weird having all those marketing people in the same place as my retro gaming friends, but it made sense at the time.
Fitness Game Club?
Guilt… that was next. The Fitness Game Club that I’ve built on Twitter, what would happen to that if Twitter imploded or less dramatically if I left? Not many people were seeing the encouraging tweets I was putting out so I circled back to making a Discord again, but exclusively for fitness. Imposter syndrome popped up, I’m not a personal trainer… I don’t want people to mistake me for one and sometimes when people in the club are having a hard time with mental health issues I just don’t know what to say. I deflect most stuff with humour, that’s just how I work and as I mentioned earlier I lost my sister to suicide and couldn’t help her, so I’m not exactly the ideal person to go to with anything like that. I will always point in the right direction though, it’s just a triggering topic for me.
If you are still using Twitter and are a FGC member please do continue to use the hashtag if you find it motivating, that’s not for me to decide, but what will be going is the twitter account. Again, the YouTube community tab is a place I will be sharing my workouts (along with this blog) so you can totally join in there by dropping a comment.
I’m taking a short break in this complete rambling of inner monologue to have a walk and drink some coffee. I’ve been awake since 5:30am and at this point my eyeballs are two heavy golf balls.
At this point I’d written 800+ words in 33 minutes. It was a good place to pause. I went for a walk and coffee at a local bar, got some fresh air with E and considered some things. The scary thing about a hive-mind social platform like Twitter is the power. The power to spread a viral message instantly. While it’s great to share memes and positivity, there’s also a downside and as I updated my account with the non-dramatic exit post, I could see trouble brewing in the retro gaming community (again) There were also some ableist comments about modded gaming controllers floating round yesterday from twitter moots. I don’t have time for that shit.
While it seems I share a lot on here, it only scratches the surface of my life and at the end of the day, I would much rather watch the sunset on a drive than have my head down checking my phone.
But won’t you still be using YouTube? Isn’t that social media?
I have always considered YouTube to be a video sharing platform and search engine. Yes there are social aspects to it, but even the Community tab is less stressful. You can click like on a post and the user can see the like counter but not who it was. I do believe that YouTube have some more social style features coming soon including handles, which will be different to channel URLs. I’ll get into this in a future and less heavy Geek Life Lately post though.
Less Distraction More Action
At present my account is still live with links to youtube and this blog so people know where to find me but honestly, I think only a few people will care to do so. That’s fine, because do you know why? Those are the people that I probably enjoyed interacting with most online and would want to stay in touch with.
There are things I want to do
As you may know if you are my Duolingo friend, I really enjoy studying and improving skills in language and tech. I recently reached a 700 day streak on Duolingo and that was just doing a third of the effort I know I can do. There’s also my digital marketing skills, which unsurprisingly as tech changes, need to be studied and certificates renewed. There’s a Geology course I want to do for fun…. the list goes on. Reading my favourite blogs is something that I don’t do anymore and it makes me sad. I’ve said so many times, oh this month I will read blogs and catch up only to completely fail as twitter turned my brain into that of a gnat with no concentration whatsoever.
My mind was locked into the possible tweet replies, drama of who said what, trending topics I feel I need to get on, the Twitter addiction that was slowly creeping on me….the hive brain. I didn’t have my mind on my life, my loved ones, appreciating life and things I want to do.
Things change now.
Thank you for sticking around to the end of this rambling post. I do really appreciate it and if you want to stay in touch please do leave a comment, check out the YouTube community tab, email me or drop me a friend request on Discord: cuteek#6381
How do you feel about the state of Twitter lately? Have you considered leaving the platform?
Vikki 💖