They came as soon as Elon Musk announced he was buying Twitter. A wave of tweets from users dramatically proclaiming they would leave Twitter if/when the deal went through.
Thanks to the drama being prolonged by Musk first reneging on the acquisition, then changing his mind to follow through on his original intent to buy Twitter, for months, the social media platform has been awash with tweets making this smug threat. As a Person Who Uses the Internet, I’m begging you, please stop. No one cares. I’m not the only one. Now, a search for « leaving Twitter » turns up just as many tweets from people annoyed about this declaration as the declaration itself, and not just right-wing users who are gloating.
To be clear, I’m not asking people to not leave Twitter. It makes sense that people want to leave the platform if Musk buys it. A polarizing public figure who has a history of making inflammatory statements, Musk says he sees Twitter as « the digital town square, » and wants to limit censorship in order to foster free speech. But the billionaire who openly disdains « woke » progressives, and was charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission for his misleading tweets, doesn’t instill confidence that his vision for a civil utopian online forum are genuine, or even feasible. Twitter is already rampant with bots and misinformation. Removing content moderation measures might make it even worse.
So if you want to leave Twitter, I get it. Just stop tweeting about it.
If you’re expecting to be rewarded for proudly announcing your moral integrity, it’s not gonna happen. Twitter is an immoral place where bad behavior is what gets rewarded with attention. If you’re hoping your tweet goes viral, which it won’t because Twitter is already saturated with this claim, what do you care? You’ll be off Twitter anyways, so you won’t even see it. Unless you stay on Twitter, or sneak back on, which is even worse since it kind of undermines the whole point of your public statement. Plus, it’s hard not to notice the irony of leveraging the platform to announce that you’re leaving the platform. If you’re worried about people being able to keep in touch, don’t worry. Your online presence follows you everywhere, Twitter following or not.
When you tweet that you’re leaving Twitter, you’re limited to two options: Become a hypocrite if you end up staying on Twitter, or feed the political narrative about outrage culture that conservative Twitter is currently relishing with glee. Instead, Mashable senior reporter Christianna Silva proposes an alternative. If you’re going to leave Twitter, « disappear and say nothing. Let me have a mystery. » The mysterious disappearance of your Twitter activity is more likely to garner some attention than any heavy-handed farewell, which — just admit it — was your goal all along.
