What I Learned From Unfollowing You
A few weeks ago, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter—just over 2,000 accounts. It was a list I’d been building up since 2014, which is the last time I “nuked” my feed and started anew. Last time, I wrote two long pieces for BuzzFeed News about the experience. Those pieces are cringey now, partly because the internet I’m describing feels quaint and outdated. Back then I, like others, was very interested in following the day’s news in real time, whatever that meant. Here I am describing my foolish attempt to monitor tweets as they hit my feed:
Going into 2014, my feed had become intolerable. During big news days, [it] would move quicker than I could read it. Lately, Tweetdeck's internet client began to fail me, lagging under the weight of nearly 2,000 constantly chattering voices. The noise had overpowered the signal. I found myself wondering, at times, if the signal still existed at all.
An unbelievable amount has changed since writing that. I do not know a single person who still shares any kind of social-media-completist aspirations, especially on a platform like Twitter. The problem of the news of the day not reaching me is no longer a concern—in fact, it’s the opposite. Every morning, the news busts in through the walls of my consciousness like the Kool-Aid man.
The other thing that happened is, of course, the last eight years of life here on Earth. It’s been a
