i think i have a pretty different relationship with social media/Twitter than a lot of other people, and it's gotten to the point that my therapist has commented on it (hush), so here's a thread abt what i do that works for me

obvs obvs obvs i don't know your life, take what works, leave the rest, this is just one bird's perspective; if these things don't work for you, rock on and have a great day!

Step One: this is critical, everything follows from this: make peace with the fact that there is more Content in the world than you will ever be able to experience. for me, i started with books: how many new ones are published every day in languages i don't even know?

how many sit on library shelves that i'll never even hear about? so many! infinitely many more than i could read even if i did nothing but read for the next thousand years! to say nothing of other forms of media — how many hours of footage are uploaded to YouTube every second?

how many days of music are released every minute? so g-ddamn many. the trick is to accept that you will experience what you experience, and that will have to be enough even tho it is only a vanishing sliver of the whole

Step Two: find other ways of getting the news, and realize that it probably doesn't matter if you don't hear Big News Story the literal second that it happens (also probably everyone will start tweeting about it anyway, lbr). eg: i signed up for the Johns Hopkins daily e-blast...

...and now i can just get a quick, solid roundup of global covid news in like, 10 minutes over lunch (with lots of links if i want to learn more) instead of Constantly Stalking The Timeline For The Latest Information

Step Three: (you don't have to do these steps in order; the numbers are fake and don't matter.) stop hate-following people. also, stop Obligation Following people. that person whose takes are all Bad where every time you see them post you're like "ugh, THIS motherfucker"?

try unfollowing them. "keeping tabs on what terrible people are up to" is actually a *way* less high-return activity for your investment of time and energy than it often seems like, unless you're literally monitoring a specific active threat to yourself (pls stay safe!)

also, that person you followed b/c maybe you're friends but you don't . . . care about their posts? or maybe they use Twitter in a way that you find irritating, but it's not like, Objectively Bad, so you're just Hanging In There b/c it would be Weird to unfollow them b/c...

...they're your friend? try unfollowing them too. no, really. nine times out of ten, they won't notice or care. if they do and they ask about it, it's totally chill to be like "ah, i'm trying to re-balance my relationship to Twitter, and since we have other ways of staying...

...in each other's lives, i didn't think it would be a big deal if i stopped following you there". (if they make this a Big Deal, there's . . . probably some other stuff going on in that friendship beyond the scope of this thread :/ you can always follow and then mute, tho...)

(also going to throw in a plug for unfollowing the High Profile Accounts that you're just following b/c Everyone Else Is Following Them and you Want To Be In The Loop. do you actually care about what they tweet for its own sake? if so, great! keep following! but...

...if you only care b/c knowing lets you feel like you're in some kind of in-crowd maybe re-assess? in my experience, when a Big Account makes news you'll hear about it quickly even if yr not following them directly, and unfollowing will spare you a lot of clutter in the interim)

Step Four: turn off retweets from people. some people i follow on here b/c they're my friends, and we agree 99% on political issues, and they retweet a *bunch*, and i'm just like "all yr retweets are GREAT but there are SO MANY of them and they're cluttering up my feed...

...and just, rlly preaching to the choir here", but i don't want to unfollow them outright, b/c friends, and this is the only platform they're on, so i just . . . turn off retweets. problem solved! i see the the posts they make (ie the posts i rlly care about) and not...

...the High Volume of posts i'm not rlly invested in, and i get to keep the Twitter Friendship going. (plus if i ever need the memes i can just go to their profiles directly and scroll to my heart's content.) i've also turned off retweets for ppl who retweet kinks i'm not into...

...or politics in a place that i have no connection to, or a whole host of other reasons — basically turning off retweets is a great tool for decluttering your feed without severing a connection with someone you generally like and want to keep around

Step Five: iterate. the goal here, basically, is to remove the ability to Doomscroll endlessly. right now, at Peak Twitter Times, my feed gives me ~6 minutes' worth of tweets to read per hour. that's a nice b/c it means i can hop on for a few minutes between e-mails or w/e...

...but i'm not gonna get sucked into an Endless Scroll b/c after about 3 minutes i'm gonna be Out Of New Tweets to read. (and if i'm bored in a waiting room or sth, i can always go to ppl's profiles and read stuff there directly — i 100% have a list of Cool Ppl With Generally...

...Good Feeds That I Don't Follow Directly, Both B/c They're Too High-Volume For Me And B/c They Get Retweeted By Everyone I Follow So Regularly That I See The Highlights Anyway.) the specific number that's right for you might be higher or lower! and again, idk yr life,...

...if a genuinely endless scroll is right for you, it's right for you! but i find switching from "this will be a Bottomless Pit of Content that i will have to make an Active Choice to stop reading" to "this will be a 3–5 minute activity, tops, barring like, a huge news story"...

...to be very helpful in having a Generally Good Time on Twitter dot com. (i try to balance my following list between friends, ppl working in my specific fields, and activisty/advocate types doing work/sharing perspectives i want to get to know better—as ever, do what works 4 u)

Step Six: vet new followers; block remorselessly. whenever someone new follows me, i give their profile a quick look. if they seem cool, rad. if they're an obvious chaser or bigot, i just block 'em on sight. similarly, whenever i see a Popular Trans Tweet,...

...i'll go into the replies and spend some time blocking every transphobe i can find. it is 100% a victory for me if no transphobe can ever find my account, if i literally never have to think about or encounter them in my day-to-day life. it makes things . . . very very peaceful

this is, again, just what works for me, but it *does* work for me, pretty well, usually, so i figured i would pass it along in case other people might find it helpful, since i see a lot of ppl expressing frustration from time to time abt how they spend time hashtag On Here

ok bye gotta go have a good Thursday, y'all!