Cross-posting to Twitter started failing in a few places, and I’m reading announcements from assorted apps and services saying they’re having problems. A few days ago I decided to just take the Twitter piece out of my cross-posting recipes. It’s not worth troubleshooting or working around. Like, literally. I have no idea what it means that most of my posts have about 10% of the views of my follower count, but that’s where it’s at.
So now I’m just thinking about why I’m not deleting an account I don’t ever use.
I see people mentioning it as a personal identity concern, wanting to make sure their handle isn’t taken over. It’s true that I have used pdxmph a lot of places, but it’s not, like core to my brand or whatever.
I see some “I know some people only there” concerns, but I don’t think that’s me, and I’m pretty easily found elsewhere (e.g. LinkedIn if push comes to shove.)
I know some people who still post there, but I don’t read Twitter much and nobody I know is posting anything you’d call vital. Fun, amusing, etc. but not vital.
Sometimes I wonder if not being on Twitter at all would read as weird, somehow?
But I also feel indifferent to Twitter generally. Meaning, when I wrote about why I have an account last year, the writing went through two stages. One involved a sentimental line of reasoning, then I put the writing down for a day and re-read with fresh eyes and deleted much of that and listed the several ruthlessly transactional reasons I really felt were keeping me on the platform. Well, the circumstances I anticipated would drive those transactional reasons came true, and when I look at all my personal channels I don’t see Twitter doing anything for me LinkedIn hasn’t done 50x.
So I can’t really think of any reasons to keep an account there, and I remember what happened when I got rid of my old account: Nothing. When I decided to be back on Twitter with a new account a few years later, I started typing in names and following people and my follower count was back up to where it had been soon enough and my “presence” was effectively “reestablished” at the level it had been. So the “what if Twitter comes roaring back in relevance and I can’t believe what a fool I was to lose faith that, like, Bernie Sanders and AOC might team up and buy it off of Elon and make it rule” scenario is covered.
Yeah. This is dumb. I’m gonna leave this sit for a day or two in case there is something about keeping an account that someone can point out to me super matters, then I’m gonna kill the thing. In some ways, a live account I never visit but assert that I own elsewhere seems like more of a reputational risk than some theoretical Nazi pdxmph stumbling across the open handle after I’ve disavowed it everywhere.