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Goodbye, Twitter

1/9/2021

18 Comments

 
Update (4/17/2021): After a mere 3 months off of social media, I'm back (for now?). Not sure how much I will use it.  Was I super productive while off of it? Nope - but I was at least more in tune with "real life" - or so it seemed at least.

[Original post follows....]

In about 48 hours, I will be permanently deleting my Twitter account (@gavanw, for the record) forever (and my Facebook account as well, which I never use anymore regardless), and I will cease to use anything that qualifies as social media (anything that existed prior to 2004, or equivalent, such as chat rooms, forums, etc - I have no problem with).

I will also be deleting the Voxel Quest / Roll Roll Die accounts (@voxelquest / @rollrolldie) - I will archive all of the Voxel Quest videos and images on this website soon.
​
(Update: I have uploaded all of the images from Twitter into the gallery, and am in the process of uploading the videos. For now I am uploading a single montage of the Twitter videos, but I will break them down into a gallery in the future when I get time.)

Ways that you can follow me or communicate with me (I will update this list as I add more methods over the next few weeks):
  • This website (RSS feed can be found in the sidebar to the right)
  • Youtube​
  • You can sign up here receive a less-than-monthly newsletter with Voxel Quest updates.
  • You can also contact me via email (gavanw@gmail.com or staff@voxelquest.com).
  • Update: you can now join the Voxel Quest Discord server by using this link.

Ok, so why am I leaving Twitter?

When it comes down to it, the answer is *time* - I waste up to 10 hours per week on Twitter, according to my phone.  That is an entire day I could spend, you know, enjoying more meaningful hobbies.  One of which, is working on Voxel Quest.

Make no mistake, I used to love Twitter, in that fleeting moment when my feed was 99.9% art and 0.1% political discussion.  Now that the ratio has inverted, I find it harder and harder to justify using it.  I find myself reaching for my phone to fill every one minute slot of my life with...what? More soul poison?

Its particularly painful for me because almost all of my active friendships exist, or started, on Twitter.  I befriended people I still consider to be my heroes. I got all of my job offers over the past decade, in large part due to Twitter.  I continue to love everybody as I originally did, even if - especially if - we disagree politically.

There are plenty of (what I think should be) nonpartisan reasons to criticize Twitter; whether or not you subscribe to those philosophies, it does make me yearn for the early days of the internet where neutrality was the rule, rather than the exception - it certainly seemed like a more peaceful place.  Perhaps we all need to disconnect a little bit.

Until we figure things out (which might be never), I am going to rewind myself to Internet 1.0.
18 Comments
Joe Crawford link
1/9/2021 03:34:31 pm

Rock on Gavan! Any platform is only useful to you if it’s useful.

Reply
Gavan Woolery
1/9/2021 03:51:55 pm

Thanks Joe! Stay in touch. :)

Reply
Jack Wrenn link
1/9/2021 04:06:56 pm

Best of luck!

Is there any way you could rework "Every Version of Voxel Quest, Ever" post so it's not gutted by the account deletion? It's truly one of my all-time favorite retrospectives.

Reply
Gavan Woolery
1/9/2021 04:36:03 pm

I will be archiving all of the past tweets (getting video / image data) at minimum, and I will try to work those into the posts as they were.

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Michael Kissner link
1/9/2021 04:16:09 pm

A great choice! All the best Gavan!

Reply
Gavan Woolery
1/9/2021 08:08:44 pm

Thanks, all the best to you as well :)

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Talvieno (Nathan)
1/9/2021 06:17:19 pm

You do what's best for you, Gavan. Make your life as happy as it can be. :) I'll still be around and checking in, just likely quietly as usual - although I think we might have a lot to catch up on at some point.

Reply
Gavan Woolery
1/9/2021 08:55:09 pm

That we shall.:)

Reply
Papaonn
1/9/2021 07:48:09 pm

Love you gavan, been following you for years.
I hope everything works out in the end for you in all aspects.

And lastly, I totally agree with your statement regarding political manipulation from those big techs.

Stay genuine, kind and righteous no matter how.

Love,
Daniel.

Reply
Gavan Woolery
1/9/2021 08:37:22 pm

Thanks for hanging in there for so long! On to the future :)

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Damien
1/10/2021 12:19:36 am

You have chosen... wisely.

Im following suit. the tweets are so terribly divisive, people yell but dont listen, every hashtag a new argument. It seems people value fake heart dopamine than care about their neighbour. I have deactivated, but some lurking just this evening has shown that Twitter is a real net negative for society, as well as Facebook which I deleted quick a ways back. Its sad to see people act like this. Best to you! You did a great thing here, I hope many more follow your example.

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Gavan Woolery
1/11/2021 09:30:44 am

Thanks! Yeah, the divisiveness was definitely a turn-off, in particular because I was occasionally/rarely participating in it, and constantly *thinking* about participating in it. I hope everyone heals soon, and I hope the price for healing is not too high.

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Sai
1/10/2021 12:59:33 am

Good luck. Gavan. Wishing you the best of success with your renewed focus on the positives in life!

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Gavan Woolery
1/11/2021 09:31:24 am

Thanks. Loved following / having you as a follower. :)

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Rune Skovbo Johansen link
1/10/2021 02:12:41 am

Sorry to hear Twitter has been working out so poorly for you lately. I can certainly relate as I was in a similar situation a few years ago.

For whatever reason, I was able to turn things around though and have a much better Twitter experience today. I started with mute words, but while it did help significantly, it was still not enough. I began unfollowing all those people who were frequently posting political stuff, especially "hot takes" that are generally uninterested in nuance. It was a tough decision since I was following them for a reason and would have preferred to keep being able to follow them for their other, interesting, stuff, but compared to leaving Twitter entirely (which I also considered) unfollowing a lot of people is still less drastic.

Crucially, I also started almost never posting political stuff myself. That had not been the case earlier. When other people post their takes it's all too easy to want to post your own as well. But it's been easier to resist that after being more conscious about how I don't really like that dynamic on Twitter at all, and also after I don't get much of those takes in my timeline anymore.

That worked wonders. My timeline was yet again about cool games, art, and tech and only rarely about politics. I've been continuously carefully curating it since as well, and only follow new people after vetting their recent tweet history.

I still probably spend bit too much time on Twitter, but at least it's not a bad time. And Wwitter does have good uses, as you note yourself, for networking and PR. Will you be keeping the @VoxelQuest account or closing that as well?

Anyway, I'm not trying to dissuade you from leaving Twitter, I just thought I'd join in with my own experience on this topic. Regardless, good luck going forward! I'll be continuing to keeping an eye on it. :)

Reply
Gavan Woolery
1/11/2021 09:34:57 am

Thanks - yes I have tried quite a few things (including being silent about politics myself, which I was mostly successful in doing for at least two years). End of the day, its less about politics for me and more about time (I just spend too much time on the site). About 10 years ago, when I was almost never on twitter, I made much faster progress. I want to at least try and see if I can bring myself back to that state of productivity.

Reply
Bora
6/14/2021 09:29:57 pm

Oh, love your work. From time to time I did encounter with your videos, didn't know you still develop it though. Recently, I was scraping stackexchange about voxel rendering and saw some of ancient replies of you on there and later your extreme view distance video; both are invaluable assets for me. May I ask you how you achieved that much distance without any noticeable performance issue, if you have time to share?

I'm working with rust and wgpu; I have been thinking about it for almost a year and decided on giving it a shot now. So, any suggestions would be helpful!

Reply
Q
8/30/2021 09:28:31 am

Best of luck with social media! I've found myself having similar issues as well!

Is this still in development?

Reply



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