If you followed me ‘cos I followed you, it’s time to do the needful. I’ll wait 😉]
I noticed recently, that by 10am almost on a daily basis, I’d already be angry about something. And the anger would be enough to last me through the day. It took me time to realize it was all because of Twitter.
You see, I used to open Twitter first thing in the morning and greeting me would be something to piss me off or seeing someone being pissed off about something. Sadly, there is always an ism to be outraged about or against.
From Feminism, to Sexism, to Racism to Journalism (writing this one just reminded me about Washington Post and CNN being mainstream fake news outlets and I’m already getting angry!).
Of course we have Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the hypocritical Barack Obama plus Russia, Putin, Syria, Assad to contend with. Back home in Nigeria, we have Buhari. Lets not forget incompetent Dalung, El Rufai and FFK are always on hand to generate outrage!
Social media affects our mood in real life! If you need proof, read about an experiment Facebook conducted a while back. But unlike Facebook that tries to filter (manipulate?)what you see, everything goes on Twitter.
So some time last year, I decided to reduce the impact my timeline had on my mood. I began muting folks who got too angry for my liking but it was politically dicy to unfollow them. I can only imagine the number of folks that did same to me when my anti- Hillarism reached fever pitch last year. :D.
Then in December, I decided that one of my new year resolutions would be to minimize the time spent on social media. So I decided unfollowing everyone would be the best way to minimize the temptation derail since the fewer things I get to see on my timeline, the less likely I’d see something to be outraged about. (I’m following only @Callbase account cos following 0 make it look like a bug and secondly, that’s my primary focus this year.)
And it’s working! I only saw about the torture of some white folk by a bunch of black folk some days after it happened. I have no idea of any new nonsense Femi Adesina says etc.
I miss seeing something on my timeline though. Twitter killed RSS so Twitter was the only way I saw that some blogs I follow consistently had an update. Jason ‘Igwe’ Njoku’s and Victor Asemota’s; to mention two.
Another bad thing about Twitter is that, the more I tweeted, the less I wrote. Why? Cos I’d try and summarize my position on a topic in a tweet or Tweetstorm. Doing that would definitely leave sooo many gaps and then the next hour would be spent clarifying.
Every now and then, I go search some handles and catch up and it has been good enough for me.
Moving forward, say in a few weeks, I’ll try and use Twitter primarily vis lists. Aggregate my feed into themes. Technology, Sports, Politics and Nigeria Wahala.
Hopefully, that will suffice to ensuring I don’t become a professional LASTMA.
Update Nov 4 2022. (Motivated by a tweet from Tayo asking why practically follow no one. False! I follow 2 accounts!.\
6 years later, I am impressed this all holds true for me today. Since then though, there has been a tiktokization of Twitter where tweets from people you do not follow show up in your feed. The recommendations are quite good as it is based on people you engage with often.