Bluesky

I really wasn’t going to write another, “I’m leaving Twitter/X,” post. I was going to quiet quit. I think announcements that you’re leaving a thing are mostly self aggrandizing, as if life won’t possibly go on once you’re gone.

It feels weird to say that about a platform that I’ve been on for 17 years, 8 months and 5 days. That’s over 45% of my life, after all.

But I’ve greatly disliked Twitter for a long time — even before Elon bought it and renamed it X. I think most social networks straddle this weird middle ground between parasocial and reciprocal relationships, and that’s more unhealthy than healthy.

But that’s neither here nor there. The main reason I’m leaving Twitter is that the posts I made get very little visibility, and I’m aggravated by it most of the time.

It’s an incredible time suck, and I see things I don’t care to see, despite spending 17 years, 8 months and 5 days carefully curating my muted words, follow lists, and block words.

So I’m jumping ship for Bluesky, which currently has the winning combination of enough people I care to interact with + no algorithm. I only see the people and topics I follow, and that’s swell.

Still, I would rather not deactivate my account for 2 reasons:

1. I don’t want my username to go back into the ether for some other random person to take.
2. My read later app, Reader by Readwise, does Twitter List Digests, and my Baseball list is an excellent resource that I won’t be ready to give up until some important folks are on Bluesky¹.

So how do I make sure those two things stay intact while also ensuring I can never log in again? Here’s what I’m doing.