Twitter Quitter (Or, Xed Out)

Add a social media platform to one of the many things I've quit.  I've quit a lot of things, but never a social media platform.

When Twitter became X under Elon Musk's ownership, I shrugged it off.  I mostly used it to publish links to my blog anyway.  The operative word is "mostly"; once in while, I would make a comment on someone else's account.  If anyone, including the account owner, dislikes my comment and told me so, I'd either apologize and/or explain what I meant or let it run down my back.

But last week, I made a critical but innocuous comment to someone regarding a selfie this person had posted.   What was the comment?  I'd, umm, rather not say.  If I repeated it here, I might cause trouble for myself.  Which is exactly what I did on Twitter/X where I made the comment originally; responses to what I said ranged from angry to furious to catastrophically nasty.  I blocked some the accounts the incoming flak was coming from, but the person I made the original comment to was particularly angered by what I'd said and responded only to make an example of my apparent thoughtlessness despite usually ignoring such foolishness.  I apologized to this person and explained there was no malicious intent and decided to wait until I got a reply acknowledging and/or accepting my apology.  Then I would leave Twitter.  Instead, I got more angry comments from others.  I decided then not to wait for any acknowledgement of my apology, and I left Twitter immediately.

I joined Mastodon, a social media platform similar to Twitter but with far more safeguards against the sort of behavior seen on Twitter, as a substitute in order to keep promoting my blog, but I'm likely to use it less often because I'm continuing to hold back from blogging too often. (That includes my beautiful-women picture blog, which I post links to only on Facebook, because it seems less and less important to me as time passes.)  I'm moving away from most social media, because it's not only too tiring, it's, as Twitter proves nowadays, too dangerous.  At least Facebook allows me to connect with friends. 

When I had two blogs I promoted on Twitter, I wanted attention in the worst way.  And that's exactly what I got on Twitter last week.  And Elon Musk thinks it's a good thing when someone gets liberally and repeatedly excoriated for an inadvertently inappropriate comment about a selfie?  I'll pass, thanks.