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):
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.
[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 ([email protected] or [email protected]).
- 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.
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