“Why I quit Twitter” is the new “Why I left New York City.”
It’s something people can simply do without talking about it, and those who do talk about it often end up tweeting again soon enough.
A newspaper column about the benefits of getting offline is quite literally preaching to the choir.
It’s also irresistible content to a certain class of the overly online endlessly thirsting for new things to riff on and especially sources of outrage.
But getting Twitter and Facebook off of my phone and out of my daily routine has been great, and I’d be selfish not to share that.
I’m a professional journalist and commentator covering New York City, and it turns out I’ve missed nothing much over a year of waiting for the news to get to me instead of racing to beat the crows to each breadcrumb of information or conversation like some Hansel on amphetamines.
The result has been more mindspace, and breathing room. More time to read.
A renewed need to engage with boredom and depression and life, and to find my own perspective instead of leaning or or pushing against those of other people.
That’s time better spent than getting sucked into interminable and often ridiculous arguments, or watching peep shows into the lives of people I once knew or barely know or the avatars I know intimately of people I wouldn’t recognize if we were in the same room.
Social media makes me feel like I am the product, because we are the product. That’s why they give it away, to sell advertisers against their user base. To do that they need to keep users engaged, and that means feeling angry and afraid to log off or itchy when they do.
The online discourse is evidence of the half-baked, incoherent and often aggrieved thoughts that — while I can’t speak for any brain but my own — I’m pretty sure bubble around inside just about everyone’s, and are generally better off left there, not cultivated and nurtured.
And that half-digested, puked-out id is still more appealing than the fan-service pearls of wisdom peddled on demand by neurotically status-seeking egomaniacal pundits with takes about whatever happens to be trending in the world, nominally backed up by facts cherry-picked from the internet or their political patrons.
It’s truly wonderful that the internet means so much human knowledge is widely available and almost no one thinks, for instance, that they’re the only gay kid on earth.
But it’s no coincidence that world opinion is getting darker and more reactionary amid a new tech shift that makes the jump from moving pictures to Leni Riefenstahl seem as archaic as a train chugging in slow motion toward a damsel tied to the tracks in a silent movie.
I’d like to think going mostly offline is why I’m mostly living up to some of last year’s resolutions, including by focusing on New York City and separating thoughts out instead of indulging my taste for run-on sentences.
If these columns aren’t cut-rate Ernest Hemmingway, at least they’re not bootleg Henry James.
This year, I’m renewing my mostly unfulfilled vow to write more about New Yorkers, and less about politics. To limit dunking on deadline, however tempting that may be given New York’s deeply dysfunctional politics and never boring but often infuriating mayor.
Like Mark Twain said, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.”
I can’t entirely heed that proverb and keep writing opinion columns, but it’s a pleasure not to have to find ways to repackage each column to to help seed it online, always with the fear that — to borrow another Twain line — a bad tweet can travel halfway around the world before a good column finds its shoes.
Sort of like how, despite what you might read online, Twain never said either of those things, as per Garson O’Toole of the indispensable Quote Investigator.
But the Bible really does counsel that “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.”
Speaking of proverbs, I recall coming across a little ad in a comic book, next to the Sea Monkeys and the X-Ray specs, for a T-shirt with a slogan along the lines of “Drop out now and avoid the rush”.
New Year’s Eve just might be the perfect time to delete your account, and reclaim your own head.
Siegel (harrysiegel@gmail.com) is an editor at The City, a host of the FAQ NYC podcast and a columnist for the Daily News.
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Harry Siegel: Log off, wake up and drop out of dumb discourse
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31.12.2023
“Why I quit Twitter” is the new “Why I left New York City.”
It’s something people can simply do without talking about it, and those who do talk about it often end up tweeting again soon enough.
A newspaper column about the benefits of getting offline is quite literally preaching to the choir.
It’s also irresistible content to a certain class of the overly online endlessly thirsting for new things to riff on and especially sources of outrage.
But getting Twitter and Facebook off of my phone and out of my daily routine has been great, and I’d be selfish not to share that.
I’m a professional journalist and commentator covering New York City, and it turns out I’ve missed nothing much over a year of waiting for the news to get to me instead of racing to beat the crows to each breadcrumb of information or conversation like some Hansel on amphetamines.
The result has been more mindspace, and breathing room. More time to read.
A renewed need to engage with boredom and depression and life, and to find my own perspective instead of leaning or or pushing against........
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