if i were a better person, i wouldn’t have left Twitter today.

after all, you don’t leave when things get tough, right? you don’t leave when there’s still something good, something redeemable, especially in a long-term relationship?

i’ve been on Twitter for fifteen years. it started as some silly site i joined in the summer of 2008 because i got sick of people at 2600 meetings asking me what my Twitter handle was. i finally caved.

since then, it became more to me than i ever imagined it would.

i’ve lived online since middle school. back then, chatting online was my haven, the one place where i wasn’t so nerdy that talking to be was social kryptonite. online i didn’t have to be a loner, even if i was being myself. in middle and high school, AOL was the backbone of my social life.

even when i started having more of an offline life in college, i never stopped socializing online. AIM was always fired up. i bounced around different forums: perjuries.com (a college mock trial forum), some Chicago rock music sites, Fark. i started a LiveJournal and hung out on communities there. i joined Facebook and later MySpace.

but, Twitter became the backbone of my online life, and has been for the majority of my adult life. that quickly became the case when i joined it at age 25, and remained the case even as i hit 40.

it’s how i stayed in touch with people i met at hacker cons, and how i found out about new cons and meetups. it’s where i found interesting things to read about how technology worked and how it could be broken.

when horse racing took hold in my brain ten years ago, it’s where i stayed on top of news, met people who loved it, and shared what i was writing about it. it’s where i stayed in touch with people i met at the track, both my home tracks in Chicago and ones i visited elsewhere.

over the last couple years, when Jeopardy! morphed from a show i’ve loved since childhood into a weird and wonderful chapter of my life, Twitter became where i met so many people who had been through that experience as well. it was also where i helped welcome so many new people into that community.

aside from the social aspects of it, i can’t imagine my career without Twitter.

in high school, college, law school, i lost count of how many times counselors and career services people prattled on about “networking”. but, “networking” always seemed so forced. “networking”, in the context of building a career, always happened at these contrived conferences and reception where grown-ups in suits represented the prospects of jobs, careers, success. those of us in school or fresh out of school would show up. i’d radiate confusion and desperation, showing up becuase i had to but also knowing in my heart of hearts that the only people getting anything out of these “networking receptions” were the lucky few who were the right “culture fit” for whoever happened to be dangling the carrot that day.

Twitter taught me that networking didn’t have to be that. on Twitter, there wasn’t the pressure of a few dozen or a few hundred people showing up in one place at one time looking for a job. Twitter was the town square where you could meet people from all over the place, interested in all sorts of things, and pop into conversations if you thought you had something to add. that always led to interesting chats, always led to learning a thing or two…and in both my previous career in computer security and my current career in horse racing, sometimes even led to finding work. much of the work i’ve had in my adult life i either found on Twitter or found thanks to people who i originally met on there.

socially and professionally, Twitter has been my core.

going back to that idea of what you do or don’t owe to a long-term relationship? i’ve been unpartnered for about a decade now, but back when i was in relationships, i had a tendency of letting them go on too long because i remembered the good times, and because i felt like i owed it to my partner and to the relationship to stay around and make things better again. but, there’s always a point of no return, when my sense of self lost in the pursuit of recapturing what we had.

Twitter was starting to feel like that.

Twitter didn’t feel like the town square anymore. it didn’t feel like a place i went to see my friends or meet new people or have conversations or learn new things, for the most part. it still had its moments, but even when i was replying to friends or checking a much-loved group chat, the feeling of Twitter’s trajectory weighed heavier and heavier and heavier.

i didn’t like when Elon Musk bought it, but even then, i doubted how much one person could do to shape something as sprawling and widely adopted as Twitter. turns out, more than i thought. forget the X thing this week, that’s just cosmetic. my “trending topics”, even as a queer and trans person who blocks queerphobes and transphobes with reckless abandon, contain anti-trans and anti-queer hashtags more often than before he bought the company. he has let people return after polluting the platform with hatred, misinformation…and now, as of yesterday, even CSAM.

when every single change to the site keeps pulling it closer to Elon Musk’s personal alt-right haven, even the block button isn’t enough to make it somewhere i can stand spending so much of my life, especially when so many of the people i care about are congregating elsewhere.

if i were a better person, less afraid of the personal and professional ramifications of ripping out my own backbone, i’d have left Twitter sooner. i’m still afraid, both of losing touch with people and missing career opportunities. but, being there feels wrong, and i have to listen to my inner voice and leave.