Twitter was the first online space where I wrote publicly. The “Hello World” tweet went out on April 2010. In May of the same year, I started publishing blog posts on the website of the company I was co-running at the time, and this personal website didn’t exist until late 2012. Twitter was the first.
My usage varied over the years:
- 2010–2013 I was very active and connected with people across the growing tech scene in Croatia.
- 2014–2015 I started working at Google and continued to be active on Twitter to share new experiences and stay connected with friends and acquaintances.
- 2016–2016 Some doubts about social media and self-promotion started to creep in. Writing on my blog also slowed down.
- 2017–2023 I produced 80-90% of content on Twitter in the first seven years on the platform, and publishing since 2017 has been slow, with occasional attempts at rebooting my activity. However, whenever I tried using Twitter for longer (i.e. consuming content), I felt emotionally unwell. I couldn’t really explain why, but it just didn’t work for me.
In 2019, I started to write and publish long-form articles and documents internally at Google. I found it rewarding, and I continued during COVID lockdowns. Some of the articles and essays ended up on this website, too. That activity helped me clarify something:
My biggest hurdle to using social media more is the lack of desire, and often time, to regularly consume and produce short-form (visual) content that social media prefers, and often demands. I really tried on several occasions over the past thirteen years, but I never managed to persist. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoy deep thinking and creating thoughtful and informative long-form written content; I usually spend all my scarce free time on those.
In 2022, I reworked the back-end and front-end of this website, started to write more, and share on social media. You know what else happened in 2022? Elon Musk’s Twitter adventures. His words and actions in the past year have pushed me to the point where I can’t stand the guy anymore. I don’t want to be associated with him in any way unless I have no other choice.
And then I realized I have a choice—I can leave. I was trying to see when Twitter will hit the bottom, but the bottom keeps falling through. Removing the bird logo and rebranding to X is the least bad thing he has done, not comparable to any human harm, but it is a visual reminder that an era has ended. The new logo is an X icon that I will click to quit Twitter for good.