October 16, 2022

Should I get back on Twitter?

Long time newsletter readers will remember that a little over two years ago, I soft blocked Twitter from my life and my mind. I didn’t delete it, but I ceased almost all tweeting, stopped looking at my unfiltered timeline, and routed nearly all interaction with it through Tweetbot and its emotionless chronological feed with minimal metrics. I stopped automatically deleting my tweets after a set time because there were so few that I could delete them manually whenever I felt like it. The tweets I did write were primarily announcements of my new work, like articles for Science, the Slate reprint of my Weird COVID essay, and occasionally newsletters I thought were particularly good or relevant to a wider audience.

So I was surprised that as I slowly recovered from my second round of Covid and started taking medication for a separate but intertwined autoimmune issue1 [footnote], one of the first signs that the fatigue was beginning to lift is that I was suddenly overflowing with ideas for tweets. My brain started drafting and workshopping them almost automatically, during meditation, walks, TV shows, and conversations when I was supposed to be listening. Do I wish it had chosen, say, my book to work on the instant writing returned as a possibility? Yes I do! But if I’ve learned anything from the last few months of intense fatigue, it’s that you can’t choose how your body allocates a limited amount of energy, and where it goes will surprise you.

Even before the flood of tweet ideas, however, I’d already been considering returning to a more active Twitter presence. The ostensible reason I’m keeping my Twitter around is “book promotion,” which I gather is a nebulous, slippery idea even when you’re doing it, much less years out from an unknown publication date. Still, I have an audience on Twitter—not a huge one, but one comprised of people who, presumably, have at least a passing interest in my work and my voice. As a professional writer and soon-to-be author, that feels risky to give up, whatever form it takes.

I started thinking about what “promoting” my book would look like on Twitter, if I kept up my minimal interaction with the platform. I’m not worried about coming off as mercenary or joyless if all I talk about is my book; I think authors tend to underestimate their audience’s appetite for seeing their success (these are people who have chosen to follow you, after all), as well as Twitter users’ generally well-honed ability to ignore whatever bores them. I am worried, however, that no one will see me talking about my book if I never talk about anything else. All caveats about anecdotal experiences and algorithmic opaqueness apply, but since I pulled back from the platform, I’ve noticed a precipitous drop-off in engagement with the tweets I do send. So far, this has been fine, and kind of the point. But eventually, it won’t be fine, if Twitter is going to serve the purpose I keep saying it’s eventually going to serve. 

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Hardly ever tweeting also left me noticeably out of practice with handling metrics. I used to not care and have no problem not looking at my likes and retweets for hours or days, but with more recent posts I became obsessed with tracking how they were “doing.” I only tweeted things I really cared about sharing, and so when I felt like no one was hearing them, it hurt. Whereas when I didn’t feel the need for any individual tweet to get attention, I was largely indifferent to whether they did or not (and usually they didn’t). Tweeting more made it easier to care less.

I’ve also been reflecting on my worst Twitter experiences, which have involved being attacked by alt-right racists for challenging a colonialist view of history. This, understandably, made Twitter less fun for me, even though in theory I’m proud to have once pissed off Ben Shapiro with tweets about archaeology. It’s not like I want this to happen again, but I also can’t prevent it from happening again, especially with the arguments I make in my book. If I keep my Twitter active without engaging with it, I’m leaving the door wide open for the worst faith readers of my work to come at me on their terms, in one of their favorite places, without the counterbalancing force of a community I’ve cultivated or enjoy contributing to.

When I realized that, my first impulse was to delete my Twitter entirely. I love deleting my social media accounts. It always surprises me how fast I feel better and how little I miss them, and I’m 100% sure the same would be true for Twitter. The positive effect would probably be even bigger, since my relationship with it is clearly more conflicted and dysfunctional than with the other platforms. (I deleted Facebook and Instagram without any hand-wringing or fanfare, public or private, whereas I’ve now written thousands of words over the course of years about Twitter.) The professional risk would also be higher, and I’m not ready to take it without at least experimenting with increasing its value. I either have to get all the way out, or I have to engage—not a lot, not as much as I used to, but more. Passively lurking was necessary for a while so I could re-set my brain, but I now suspect it’s not the permanent answer.

Luckily for me, I already have content I enjoy creating and sharing, in the form of this newsletter. I’ve resisted putting it on Twitter very often, because I want to keep this space small and relatively independent of the discourse and its pressures. Let’s face it, though…it could be a little bigger. I do a lot of work on it, and the right people seem to enjoy it. Maybe the time is right to add in just a little bit of promotion and see what happens. Is it fun for me? Does my Twitter audience want more Lizzie Wade™ content, such that more of them would subscribe here?2 And the biggest question for me: Can I return to posting on Twitter without scrolling on Twitter or getting caught up in metrics? Can I craft a Twitter presence that serves me without giving my entire self over to serving it? I honestly don’t know, and the answer to the last two questions will ultimately be what determines the future of this experiment. In the meantime, you can follow me @lizzie_wade.