Deleting My Tweets

Today I’m copying Ryan North and deleting my tweets.

As a sentimental crotchety hoarder, I always hate the prospect of scrubbing stuff online. I like being able to search parts of my life at any given moment, and giving future generations a chance to stalk me and develop an amazing parasocial relationship with me. But with Twitter? Nah.

I’m deleting my tweets because unfortunately that stuff matters. People get fired over tweets they made many years ago. Public images are formed over this kind of stuff. And I tweeted just enough not to know what stuff was in that account. I got in a lot of political arguments, did “Hot Takes,” and probably tweeted when I shouldn’t have. For all I know, I have never tweeted anything genuinely awful, but… It’s hard to know for sure.

So, just in case, I’m chucking it all. Deleting my tweets from 2010 all the way to November 2020. No exceptions, not even the popular stuff. Not even the time I livetweeted myself waiting for the Wii U. I could have spent hours and hours doing it, but being cute and sentimental here was just too much work. Additionally, I deleted a lot of tweets from early 2021 that I deemed Egh.

Anyway, I backed it all up, so I can always see my own tweets. They just won’t be public anymore.

From now on, I’m probably not going to use Twitter for its social purpose. Most of my tweets will be strictly promotional. A way for people to see the creative stuff I’m up to all in one location. Uh, besides this blog. Seriously, this blog is way better than Twitter for seeing what I’m up to. Or it should be, but I forget to post to promote stuff sometimes, whoops.

Social media is poison, absolutely. It’s something I’ve tried to distance myself from for a long time. So, in a way, I think this will help me further that goal. And I might do it again sometime in the future.