Twitter Is Dying, And It Makes Me Sad

An ode to a troubled website

Pictured: The now-endangered bird. Photo by Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash

I first created a Twitter account in 2015. It was already a pretty big place to be, and I thought it would be good for my scientific career and my blog to have a presence on the website. As a millenial who was growing up as social media became a thing, it seemed like a natural place to go and have a bit of fun while also maybe reaching some new people who I’d never know otherwise.

I soon spent a far-too-big amount of time on the platform. It turned out, you see, that Twitter was not just a useful place to meet people, it was also really quite enjoyable as well.

Pictured: Fun. Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

And yes, it was also a source of constant abuse, stress, and discomfort. I have had death threats and targeted harassment campaigns started on Twitter. There were always too many Nazis, and the response from management was often to shrug their shoulders and say that it was too hard to fix the issue.

But Twitter was also, for much of the time, a really enjoyable place to be. You could argue with random strangers, trade studies about everything from vaping to vitamin C, and meet academics that there’s no way you’d ever find in person…