And Then There Was Twitter

And Then There Was Twitter

When I began my blog, I also began posting content on Instagram and Twitter. It was a very slow start for me, and in the beginning, I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. Twitter was a whole new world for me.

I was first introduced to Twitter years ago via work. After a few tries of navigating my way through Twitter, I didn’t like it at all. There was an expectation for staff on my job to gain an audience by tweeting what was happening within our work arena.

Frankly, I simply wanted to do my job at work. I didn’t want to tweet about it. If I had, I would not have painted the job in a good light. So I didn’t tweet. I kept silent.

I didn’t have much of a verbal voice that anyone wanted to hear in the natural sense anyway – especially at work. I couldn’t imagine what anyone wanted to hear from me on Twitter. So I never took it seriously.

So when I considered drawing people to my personal WordPress blog, I was very apprehensive about using Twitter, despite it seeming to be the most logical tool to use, to draw people to reading my content.

In fact, I developed deep anxiety over the implication of using Twitter. I cannot even begin to explain it. Even though all forms of social media are shared on a globally, I was afraid of Twitter. However, I knew Twitter was a sure way of helping me in getting people to notice my blog.

Over time, however, Twitter became less about promoting my blog and more about something else entirely.

Yes … There Was Twitter

There was just something very different for me about Twitter the second time around after failing to make use of it for work purposes. I found actual community. I found that I was not alone in my personal struggles … that there were others who could understand me.

Online, I didn’t experience the same feeling of mutual comradery anywhere else – not even on Facebook. Of course, I didn’t do content for Facebook. Initially, I tried that route – making Facebook like a personal blog of my life’s events, but I learned very quickly I couldn’t share much of myself there.

I actually found it hard to keep my presence on Facebook because of the familiarity of family, acquaintances, colleagues, and enemies. The history I had with people I knew made it very difficult. The air of Facebook left me completely annihilated and seeking safer ground. My life had nowhere to go there. So I shut myself down and eventually left the platform.

On Facebook, everything seemed to be based on some type of pretense, and I couldn’t just share my truth. Plus, I was acquainted with too many people, and too many people thought they knew me. It turns out that my truth was very connected with to the lives of others who knew me. Sharing myself on Facebook meant also meant sharing about the intertwined lives of others even if I never mentioned anyone by name.

Too many times, those who wished to keep me silent on Facebook would do so by ignoring my posts, criticizing my posts, or stalking and bullying me via messaging. Most often, I was gaslighted regarding my posts which I always found odd because I never talked about any personal experiences.

Everything was all surface level regarding everyone’s interactions with me, and surface level for many was just the basic way of being fake. Yet, if I ever tagged anyone, they would untag themselves as if to show that they were not truly associated with me even though the only reason the picture was taken in the first place was because I was with them.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized I was surrounded by narcissistic types and their flying monkeys, and Facebook was more their playing field for triangulating and abusing me against others. Once I became aware of the narcissistic social media games, I stopped engaging, and I stopped trying to make friends or establish myself as anyone connected with anybody. It was a painful social media existence.

No one I knew truly wanted to relate to me on Facebook. They wanted me to either be quiet or kiss their photo bottoms. They wanted me to keep up with their pretenses, and that was just not my thing. So, eventually, I stopped posting anything or checking on my feed to even bother to care.

When I realized that I had been pulled into games of narcissists I knew who wanted to used Facebook to cause me internal emotional pain, I strategically began deleting posts and pictures until there was nothing on my page to see. Then just like that, I vanished, and then I decided to deactivate my account.

A Twitter Community

Twitter is where I found community in others. I not only found people who shared my interests, I found commonality in experiences too. I found people who actually related to me and didn’t mind that I related to them.

It was not my intent to necessarily find “relationships” on Twitter, but I did develop enough of a camaraderie with different tweeters that I looked forward to seeing their messages and reading their content nearly everyday.

I’d even go as far as to say that I learned a lot about different tweeters’ personalities based on what they tweeted about. It’s really interesting how that happened. I felt like I knew a lot about them without actually knowing a lot about them.

Of course, I know that I can only gain knowledge about what I know about people based on how they present themselves and what they choose to present about themselves, but I believe that most of the people I encountered via Twitter were truly genuine and very likable people.

Aside from trolls and bots, I’d say my experiences with actual people on Twitter were relatively positive. Everyone was just trying to navigate their lives just like me. Many were looking to understand and to be understood, and many were seeking to give understanding and share their light.

For the most part, I seriously had to monitor the amount of time I spent on Twitter. Being on the platform became highly addictive for me. When going through bouts of insomnia, Twitter became the bane of my existence at times. I realized that I had somewhat of a Twitter addiction. I chose this social media platform over all others – at times forgetting that I had other platforms.

When loneliness struck me, I ran to Twitter. I saw connection in people’s stories. I felt life. I felt a reason to go online. I actually felt connected to some tweeters as if to be on the same wavelength with them. Sometimes I even saw Twitter as my safe place.

I got to know the stories of some tweeters, and I always took note of when they were not around on the platform. I truly felt their absence and was happy when they’d reappear with a post. I’d even pray for them with the hopes that their situations would improve. For me, that was connection.

So when I say I looked forward to some people’s tweets, I really did. Some of their words were life to me. Their words made me laugh, gave me something to ponder and even made me angry and come to tears. I bookmarked a lot of their tweets because I needed to process them … to savor their words and their meanings.

I got a lot from Twitter. It was as if I struck gold.