why i deleted my twitter account

Apr 10, 2008

[A cartoon from 2007 etc.]

It’s no big deal. I liked Twitter. But I found it too easy.
I think my time would be better spent drawing cartoons and writing books.
That’s just how I feel.
[UPDATE:] This story seems to have made it onto the front page of Techmeme. Lots of people talking about it. Wow.
[UPDATE:] An archive of my Tweets can be found here.
[UPDATE:] A couple of hundred e-mails later, I restored the Twitter account. You can read again it here.

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Pamela Slim

15 years ago

Wow. I don’t know why I am surprised, but I am.
What a decisive move. In support of your emerging book.
Good for you.

Ric

15 years ago

Apparently getting rid of a Facebook account is not all that simple … when they say it’s deleted you may find that all your entries, news feed items etc. still exist ….

Shai Coggins

15 years ago

Missed your announcement on this on Twitter. So, it’s a bit of a surprise. I even still remember your Tweet saying Twitter has become important to you because of the # of followers you had, etc. But, I can understand where you’re coming from to some degree.
In any case, you’ll be missed on Twitter. But, I’m sure we’ll continue to hear from you.
Good luck with the new direction of your writing/blogging/social web/drawing life.

mdy

15 years ago

Wouldn’t you want to keep your Twitter account if only to keep someone else from claiming that name? Even if you don’t update it ever again?

Gregg Scott

15 years ago

Now I can rest assured that my Timeline-gobbling rant of 10 days ago isn’t the reason you’ve closed shop. It was only reason you stopped Following me.
This is a bold and courageous move as Twitter is becoming a vortex – perhaps a vital one – in which I find it hard to manage or even attend to real life.
An artist’s aura of empathy is a precious field which can so easily be corrupted by distraction; even good distraction.
I look forward the 2008 panel on the History of Your Blog.
I thank you for your thoughtful discourse in the Twitter Timeline on the legacy of W. and the ramifications of the 49th Parallel.
Say what you will of Twitter but it is quite unlikely that I would have had the opportunity to converse with the likes of Steve Gillmor, Laura Fitton and yourself.
Now, I’m going to text @mydishes and tell them to wash themselves so I can check my current replies.
Gregg

Seth E

15 years ago

So is everything you ever wrote on there just…gone? Is it all really that worthless? I ask that not just of your account, but in the greater sense. Would you ever, say, do the same thing to your blog? Just hit ‘delete’ and flush it all away. Is everything we’re doing here completely disposable?

Joe Andrieu

15 years ago

Doh!
A said day, Hugh. I enjoyed your random updates from Alpine.
We’ll miss you.

Geoff

15 years ago

I wonder when gapingvoid.com will become a gaping void?

Mickipedia

15 years ago

I will miss you.

Tantek

15 years ago

Hugh,
Your twitters will be missed, past and present. Did you consider simply letting your Twitter account stay frozen in time for the indeterminate future? I know I (and several folks I know) will miss numerous gems of yours that we had favorited. Perhaps you could consider doing so – I think the Twitter folks have the ability to pull old accounts out of cold storage or something.
Thanks for all the art you create in all forms.
A fan,
Tantek

hunee

15 years ago

I will miss your tweets…but wherever you are happy ..follow your heart… 🙂

Cindy

15 years ago

I’ve always heard toxicity is a function of dose. And then there’s something about moderation that people harp about. So I s’pose if one could Twitter just enough but not too much, that would be nice. You’re right, though, about it being just too easy.

DunCAN Fischer

15 years ago

Good move.
I congratulate your decision. FOCUS is a key skill to create the best of whatever it is you are into.
D

Dave O'Flynn

15 years ago

It wasn’t because you couldn’t tweet about anything other than Alpine, Texas then? 😉
But yeah, tools like Twitter, Facebook, et al encourage a fascination with the minutae of life. Makes it much harder to concentrate on the things that require uninterrupted though.
Good luck with the book!

Jeff Tidwell

15 years ago

drawing is good!

Chris Heuer

15 years ago

It’s become a 24/7 conversation like a stadium chat room instead of a microblogging platform now – I enjoy being connected to everyone, but I understand why you want that hour or two back each day. Very bold move, kick ass on the book and dont look back…

dydimustk

15 years ago

You will be missed.
Your conviction and determination is inspiring.

Victoria Marinelli

15 years ago

Wow, does your cartoon ever resonate for me. Although for me, the midpoint between when I started blogging and now – when I was first getting seriously derailed – revolved more around politics than tech, a pattern which has more or less continued. (Case in point: 80% of all my recent blog posts are twitter digests; another 15% or so are either explicitly political or explicitly tech-related. Which leaves – if one is assessing things generously – maybe 5% of content that is in line with my original blogging intent; that is, it favors literary narrative over polemics.)
Finding balance is a precarious and difficult feat. (Or we make it so, through all our collective and individual distractions.)
In any event, I quite respect your choice here, and hope it bears fruit for you in terms of improved focus and attention to matters of craft, the stuff you live for, the stuff you love.
And which, of course, you’re incredibly good at.

Rachel

15 years ago

Oh. A surprise. It was only a few weeks ago you were saying it was the only way you were going to communicate, you were not using email. So the blog is what it left.
But I’m with the others – why delete? Why not just mothball and leave the information up there? You’ll be missed.

John T Unger

15 years ago

Wow, Hugh, I guess you *were* serious.
Didn’t think you’d delete the account though, figured you were gonna just stop posting to it. Or that you were kidding.
I feel like you deleted part of my email inbox. Part of it that I was saving because I liked it. I don’t go for that inbox zero stuff… I save the things I like.
I’m bummed about losing the ability to chat with you on twitter, but really kind of even more bummed about losing one half of tweet replies and DMs between us. I’d have copied those if I knew this was what you had in mind. Bummed that all the tweets of your I had in my favorites are also gone. I guess I should have backed shit up, eh?
I can totally see why you’d rather work than tweet, and can even understand having to take a nuclear option to avoid “accidentally” getting back into it. But I wish you’d left the frickin’ pages up and just locked yourself out of the account with a password you couldn’t remember or something.
And yeah, I know they were your words and you have the right to do whatever you want with them, etc. Just wish you hadn’t.
Drastic measures, man. You know what? Fuck. That’s really all I have to say about it. I’m fucking pissed off. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

jflowers

15 years ago

Seems like 2007 should really have read, “SOCIAL OBJECTS! SOCIAL GESTURES! SOCIAL MARKERS! (twitter!)” You really didn’t say much about Twitter until the very end of the year (and the beginning of this one), and for those of us who never read your tweets, it was only a very few mentions.
I honestly never understood your fascination with it in the first place. It displays too little information in too impersonal a context for it to really matter to anyone (even less so than Facebook, in my opinion). Sure, you can title them “@whomever”, but it’s very much a public conversation, and you still can’t say all that much for it to mean much of anything to anyone. Kind of goes against a lot of what you say about social objects and making real connections and whatnot. Not to say that Twitter doesn’t have its uses, but as the main #1 personal contact of a person, or for doing any kind of business with an even slightly articulate message…it is just not the right tool for the job.
Glad you finally saw your own light 😉

Baher

15 years ago

After your excitement and evangelism of twitter, this comes as a total shock to me.
And this “too easy” reason is not a meaningful explanation, is it?

Mike

15 years ago

I guess I knew it had to end eventually. You were following, and being followed by, too many people for it to be sustainable for long.
Limits are a good thing. Twitter is working so well (for now) because it placed a limit on what you could do (send updates) and imposed a challenging limit on length (140 characters). These limits make you boil down your thoughts until only their most valuable core remains.
Unfortunately, like all the other social networks out there right now, Twitter has not placed a limit on connections with other users. And because there is no limit, these connections have less value than they could, with people trying to scoop up friends by the thousands.
Maybe in the future someone will develop a mechanism that makes people sit down and spend a couple of minutes figuring out which connections are the really valuable ones to have. Until then, we probably need to try and place that limit on ourselves. Consider it an interpersonal diet.
Personally, I’ve found that following 30 people has been working well, so maybe I will try and stick with that. I guess after tonight I am left with one spot to fill, and boy it sure does it come with some big shoes.

John Wesley

15 years ago

If it means more cartoons and writing I’m all for it.

Phil Whitehouse

15 years ago

Can’t help feeling that if you’d followed the ten commandments (http://www.twitter.com/tencommandments) you might’ve gotten a more enjoyable and sustainable experience out of twitter…

Tim Draayer

15 years ago

Hugh,
Its admittedly been to long since I’ve spent some time here but I was following you on twitter.
I enjoyed your updates but I admire your decision to commit to the tasks at hand which don’t delude your efforts.
All the best.
Tim

Peter Cooper

15 years ago

I think I see a good point in this somewhere, but what intrigues me is how Jaiku is less easy…? 🙂

Neil Simmons

15 years ago

Sad to hear that, Hugh – but you gotta do what you feel is right for you!
Good luck with the book.
Regards
Neil (dungeekin)

Tom Raftery

15 years ago

Wow Hugh,
On the one hand I am shocked at such a big move and on the other hand I can understand it perfectly.
I have said many times that my blog output has diminished drastically since I started using Twitter. It is an incredible time sink.
Having said that, I get enormous value from Twitter so I would find it very difficult to drop it.

Bernie Goldbach

15 years ago

Fair play to you for knowing where to spend time for best effect. I like your drawings more than I liked your tweets because your drawn characters on cards stick with me longer than your typed characters on screen.

Cara

15 years ago

Talking to a friend the other day about
“How to be creative”
He wondered why you recommended to “stay away from crowds ” .
You overheard that, didn’t you?

Ariel Waldman

15 years ago

Aw, I’m so sad! How is your prediction supposed to come a reality without you there!?
https://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004000.html

richard galbraith

15 years ago

what happened to ‘if you’re not on twitter i dont want to talk to you’ ? weird, anyway, looking forward to more cartoons.

Locutus of Borg

15 years ago

Hugh on February 29th:
“Note to World: If you’re not on Twitter, I don’t want to make friends with you.”
Funny how things turn out 😉

Christian

15 years ago

I thought I read somewhere that you had a financial twitter??
Oh well, I agree with Duncan Fischer, Focus is a good thing!

Dileepa

15 years ago

What an apt cartoon. Instead of using technology to talk about other things, all people seem to talk about is technology itself. Crazy, crazy world.

Mary Anne Davis

15 years ago

Seems kind of harsh…

jill

15 years ago

Thank god for that. Now you just need to convince Scoble.
I personally enjoy your considered and stylish posts to be unconfined by the twitter 140 characters. Hopefully you will return to blog posting a little more frequently, even if it is ‘just’ the cartoons.
I enjoyed texting my friends but when I stopped we had even more to talk about over a glass of wine. I am now online only three days a week, it feels like breathing again.

Mike Doeff

15 years ago

I hope that Twitter reserves the gapingvoid user id – sort of like a sports team retiring a player’s number – for you in case you decide to return someday.

Texas ranger

15 years ago

why is this a loss? Spent way to much twitter time talking about the Texas move. We get it, you moved to a small TX town. zzzZzzzz

Alvin

15 years ago

I will definitely miss your tweets. Bummer too, because 3 days ago I was excited when I got the Hugh MacLeod is now following you e-mail.
Happy drawing and writing.

Rob Clark

15 years ago

I’ll miss having you as part of my daily twitter stream, Hugh, but definitely understand the decision.
It gets far too easy to just enjoy the content of others and not create your own … and the 140 chars is often enough to satiate that need to express one’s self, but not nearly enough to make an impact.
I look forward to seeing the increased output of cartoons though.

christoff

15 years ago

I did enjoy reading the tweets about your various misadventures. I think you should come back, but limit yourself to 5 tweets a day.

Beppone

15 years ago

Good choice… i need your cartoons 🙂

fred wilson

15 years ago

i agree with most of the comments on this thread.
mostly that you will be missed.
but like many forms of social media, twitter can be addicting and if it was getting in the way of important work, then you made the right call
i hope you will still keep blogging and i hope all of your friends on twitter will keep linking to your blog and your drawings
fred

Average Jane

15 years ago

We’ll miss you on Twitter, but I agree that it can be a time suck.
Looking forward to the book!

liza

15 years ago

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
snif
snif
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Alex

15 years ago

You will be missed! I enjoyed getting your updates from your travels and from Alpine, but I suppose you’re looking for more creative and thoughtful media than 140-character tweets (and 2005 was a good year for blogging).