An Explanation For Why I Quit a Bad Website

Since I deleted my Twitter account a couple weeks ago, many have been wondering why I chose to walk away from the website at the height of my fame, abandoning my nearly 300 adoring followers who read all of my tweets in rapt admiration. I’ve had people approach me on the street and ask me: “Why, Josh? Why did you do it?” So even though I had no plans of making the cliché post about my departure, I figured I owe it to all the fans and kids out there who look up to me.

My reason had nothing to do with any individual people, except possibly Kanye West, but more to do with how the site was starting to function due to changes Twitter made to its service. I’ll focus on the two big ones that I feel fundamentally altered Twitter and turned it from a Reasonably Good Website into an Actually Quite Bad Website.

The Character Limit

Recently, Twitter doubled its character limit from 140 to 280, in order to allow people to “more thoroughly express themselves and engage in the discussions they love” or some nonsense like that. This was met with mostly anger, but the outrage largely subsided after a few weeks as I guess most people got used to it. I never did, though.

A moment of over-analysis: I feel like the 140 character limit was important not just because of brevity and readability, but because it made people think about what they were saying and how best to say it. Now even with 140, Twitter was not necessarily a beacon of intellectual conversation, but tweets were often funny, incisive, and it felt different from other social media and writing.

Right after 280 was installed, there was a noticeable downgrade in tweet quality. Now tweets often took up twice as much space on the timeline, and it’s not like the extra words actually accomplished anything. Tweets didn’t have more clarity, they weren’t funnier, and they didn’t provide more information. All this change did was give people the freedom to write poorly.

So that change was part of why I quit, since it made my timeline into a mess, but it wasn’t the complete dealbreaker that reason #2 was.

Our Algorithm Thinks You Might Like This Algorithm

No, the change that nearly singlehandedly destroyed Twitter for me was the switch to an algorithm timeline, which was unrolled a few months ago by a company that seemingly has no idea why anyone uses its service. This was the single biggest reason I found myself looking at my timeline and getting actively irritated, because the entire point of Twitter was that you got to curate your own timeline and choose who showed up in it.

Messing with the linear timeline and inserting tweets from people you don’t follow or care about was bad enough, but the way Twitter chose which tweets showed up in your timeline was the truly offensive part. Much like Facebook, it decided it based on how many “engagements” and retweets and likes a tweet had, which meant you were always getting garbage memes or popular tweets by famous people shoved into your timeline.

More over-analysis: part of what I (and I suspect others) enjoyed about Twitter is that it was an egalitarian medium. For a long time, a tweet from some nobody like me would show up in your timeline and look exactly the same as a tweet from a celebrity with 10 million followers. The cool implication here is that my thoughts and opinions are just as worthwhile as theirs, or at least just as worthy of consideration.

This change destroyed that concept of the site. Pretty much overnight after instituting the algorithm, the site turned into a popularity contest (well, more than it already was) and a place that became disproportionately dominated by celebrities who aren’t actually interesting or intelligent. And I’ve gone off on this subject before, but the assumption that the best tweets you most want to see are the ones with the highest RT/fav numbers is the opposite of correct. The stuff that gets RT’d is usually pandering, hysteric, or obvious, and people began to tweet more in those tones to get high engagement numbers.

A sentiment I used to see about Twitter vs. Facebook is that Facebook was where you were stuck with boring people you knew and Twitter was where you could meet cool strangers. The algorithm timeline turned Twitter into the worst of both: a site where you were stuck with strangers you don’t like. It’s worse than Facebook. It might be the worst site on the entire internet. I haven’t even mentioned Trump yet.

It’s all a bummer because Twitter was an enjoyable place for a long time. I met (kind of) some people there that I liked talking to, and I think I even became a better writer through crafting tweets and almost developing a character in a sense. But the site has turned into something dark and ugly and I didn’t want to be there anymore. I realized one day that I was spending a lot of time looking at this thing that I didn’t even like when I could be reading a book.

The decision to quit entirely was maybe excessive, but I’m a firm believer in giving up when things get tough or unpleasant. Knowing when to quit is one of my few real life skills. In this case, it just felt like the site wasn’t doing anything positive for me anymore. I was thinking about it too much (in case that’s not obvious by now) and it stopped being fun.

And on some level, I began to feel like maybe we’re not meant to have a constant stream of people’s opinions running on our phone at all times, and I was tired of spending so much time just reacting to things and reading other people’s reactions. So I deleted my account while everyone was yammering about the White House Correspondent’s Dinner and haven’t really missed it much since. I haven’t seen anything about Trump in weeks. I don’t know what Kanye is tweeting about. I barely know what that “Laurel and Yanni” thing was. I read a book last week and enjoyed it.

“The Man Who Knew Too Little” Might Know More Than We Think

A couple days ago, the New York Times published “The Man Who Knew Too Little,” a story about Erik Hagerman, who has withdrawn completely from hearing about the news since the election of Trump. There were a variety of responses to this, mostly negative about either the article or its subject. Some felt it was a waste for the Times to use precious article space on this doofus. Others felt that the man’s method of complete ignorance and withdrawal was loathsome, a luxury afforded by his privilege and total lack of regard for others.

I found the article fascinating for a variety of reasons. I was amused at the lengths Hagerman went to in order to avoid hearing the news, and the article approaches his grand experiment with a proper “look at this guy” tone, particularly when he tells a friend “I’m now officially cross with you” when she breaks his self-imposed “blockade.” But beneath the chuckles at his eccentricities, there is some real insight here into privilege and the way people use it.

The prevailing opinion on Hagerman is that he is privileged and his blockade is the workings of a selfish man who wants to shut off from the world instead of confronting problems head-on. This is true to an extent, but also an oversimplification that doesn’t draw a key distinction: that following the news is not the same thing as actually being politically active. In fact, following the news passively and commenting on it — while also being fully aware that it only minimally affects you — is its own form of privilege that Hagerman has opted out of.

It is hard to call Hagerman’s blockade admirable, but there is an element of self-awareness to it that I respect. For various reasons, not everyone is cut out to be a political actor, but many people (including me) continue to comment on politics on social media and in real life as if it makes any difference. Hagerman, on the other hand, acknowledges his limitations, plainly stating that he never did anything productive in his years of following politics. While this isn’t the type of attitude that will win person of the year awards, his awareness of his shortcomings is something that others can learn from and I am sort of envious of it.

So this article caused some self-reflection, in that I’m a privileged guy who follows the news a lot and have really been no more productive in terms of creating actual change than Hagerman has been while obliviously listening to white noise in his headphones at the coffee shop. I’ve had an internal struggle lately over whether I should be doing more or less. As much as part of me wants to be the type of person who really makes a difference, there is also the truth that I can’t really stomach a lot of politics, am deeply cynical about the way the system works, and frankly just lack the networking ability to really make anything happen. My contributions have been limited to random donations, which is something that can be done independent of plugging into the gross news cycle.

Hagerman has figured something out here: that shutting up and going away is possibly more valuable than the counterproductive patterns I and many others engage in, of treating politics like entertainment and spending so much of our day reacting to circumstances outside of our control. Even though he likely reached this conclusion through self-preservation, there is real value in shutting off the 24/7 news faucet. Of course, those who have the passion and drive to make a difference in politics should do so. For the rest of us, sticking our head in the sand might be an improvement.

Vyva Melinkolya is a Reminder of Why Shoegaze is Great

I watched lot of figure skating and icedancing during the Olympics. In those competitions, contestants receive two different scores during the routine: there is the technical score, where the judges determine how well they executed certain elements of their routine, then there is a program component score that measures their artistry, interpretation and presentation. Honestly, it’s a pretty baffling scoring system for a sport and it is communicated very poorly to the viewing audience, but it got me thinking about how I evaluate music, especially shoegaze.

There is a very established shoegaze formula, and like those figure skating routines, there are certain elements I really want the performer to nail. It comes down to a certain balance of the reverb and noise of the guitar with the vocals and the melodies. Everyone who makes this music is aware of that framework and there’s a large supply of technically competent shoegaze out there. Where I’ve found artists struggle most is in that “program component” area: a lot of shoegaze will sound the way I want, but it’s hard to make it feel personal and meaningful, which is how the formula can be transcended.

I found this album on Bandcamp by Vyva Melinkolya, and it stands out because of how it nails the technical aspects of shoegaze while also having a personal touch — it’s a melding of the shoegaze formula with the type of intimate recordings that Bandcamp makes possible. On a technical level, the sound of this album is like a tribute to all the shoegazers of the past, and it’s easy to hear the inspiration from Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and others. But what I really love about it is how it has a real sense of individuality and purpose. While shoegaze can so easily be impersonal and focused purely on aesthetics, this album suggests that, beneath all the layers of reverb and noise, it can be a way for an artist to express their true self.

Alyc Diaz is the artist here, and this self-titled album really feels like it reflects her personality and experiences, even if a lot of it is kept under a veil of noise. To that end, she helps with any problems deciphering the lyrics by adding intimate little notes on each song on Bandcamp, which could have been handwritten in a different era. They give the impression of an artist who is passionate about this style of music and is trying to figure out who she is. The note on “Identity” says it’s “about a lot of things. Gender, trauma, seeing things that aren’t there, transitioning.” In the song, she sings “I look in the mirror, don’t even know me.”

The uncertainty in the lyrics is a natural match for the shoegaze style, which can allow a singer to remain hidden from view. Beneath the sheets of guitar, Diaz carves out a little world for herself, proving the universal power of shoegaze: it doesn’t care about your gender, the language you speak, or really anything else as long as you can get that chemistry right. In track after track, Diaz finds the right balance of loudness and quiet and ugliness and beauty.

Her talents are immediately present on the first track, “Love’s Easy Years (Nonbinary Heartbreak).” Its title, which references the Cocteau Twins’ “Love’s Easy Tears,” along with the heavy opening riff make it instantly clear that she knows the history of this music and how to recreate it. There is a feeling of longing in the song and its lyrics, when Diaz insists “love’s easy years will come to me if I truly believe.” Like the rest of this album, this song functions as an ode to what makes shoegaze great and as a powerful personal statement.