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15 Comments

Day Two Without Twitter

Yesterday I talked about my first day of having the Twitter app deleted from my phone. I mentioned I would likely build an app to let me send tweets without having to consume from my Twitter feed. I did exactly that today. I built a simple command line app to send my tweets.

But that’s not what you care about. You care about how I’m handling this crazy, surely short-lived, experiment. Today, I noticed something interesting. I found myself adding sites to my Home Screen more than I ever have in the past. Without Twitter as my central content ingestion network, I’ve been visiting a wide range of sites. To help, I’ve added those sites to my phone’s Home Screen.

Side note about this: Not nearly enough sites leverage the progressive web app experience. Sites I would expect to do so include this site and Hacker News. However both are nothing more than bookmarks that live on your Home Screen.

Anyway, I survived another day without Twitter, my creativity has not taken a hit, and I’ve been exploring a lot more outside my bubble.

  1. 3

    Good deal. It’s a nasty, polarizing time-sink. Your life will be improved without it.

  2. 2

    Ive been on the way out of Twitter for a long time now. It’s a hate farm.

    I’ve recently got into Reddit which seems to fill the space nicely - and more positively. Even had my first successful post yesterday!

    Now, I need one good post to link to my product ✊

    1. 2

      Congrats on the post! I’ve been just now starting to dip my feet into Reddit. I’ve been worried about the discourse but it mostly seems positive there.

      1. 2

        A key difference I noticed between Reddit and twitter is that Reddit is really about the conversation thread or topic. You almost don’t know who you’re talking with and it doesn’t matter really. With Twitter it’s the opposite, it’s mostly about who you are talking with. It’s a stage for ego.

    2. 1

      It’s a hate farm.

      Only if you follow people who tweet/retweet that. I'm having quite a pleasant Twitter experience, one of the ingredients is not following anybody who shares news or politics.

  3. 2

    I deleted the Twitter app from my phone, but I still had the habit of going to the browser version.

    Just blocked it from my browser too :)

    1. 1

      I have not yet checked in on the web app, but I could see that being something that sucks me in. Blocking it is smart.

  4. 2

    Nice! Glad you're doing this!

    Social media can be an insane time-sink. I personally make it a point to go fully off social media 1-2 months a year.

    I'm in the middle of my current social media break and I'm so glad I survived the election madness.

    1. 2

      The election was the thing that finally made me try this. It just feels so unhealthy. As I said in my first post, I don’t realistically think I can keep it up because it is an addiction but I’m going to try.

      1. 3

        The book Digital Minimalism helped me. Good luck man!

        1. 1

          Thanks for the recommendation! Going to pick that up.

        2. 1

          This looks like a good read! Thanks for sharing.

      2. 2

        You can do it. Like most addictions, it helps if you ease into it instead of a full cut off. Start slow, maybe disconnect for a day or two a week (or a month) and build it up.

        With time, you'll find yourself going weeks without thinking about social media.

  5. 2

    Sometimes I need to check Facebook groups for marketers. It's horrifying how often I forget why I opened the page and end up mindlessly scrolling through the feed. What a brain hacking machine.

    1. 1

      That has been the biggest revelation for me. When I pull my phone out now, I can’t mindlessly scroll. I have to be intentional with what I do.

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