It’s been a week since I deactivated my Twitter account, and I don’t miss it.
I suppose that’s not a 100% accurate statement because if it was completely out of mind I wouldn’t be writing a blog post about it, but I can honestly say that I haven’t once been tempted to reactivate my account or even go to the site. I have, in fact, actively avoided doing so and have even been reluctant to follow people on Mastodon who are using the @twitter.com instance to post content.
Shortly before deactivating I ruminated on some of the reasons I was hesitant to do so, and one of the biggest hurdles I had to get over was accepting the fact that my decades-long pursuit of wealth and fame through the internet was over.
Like many members of Generation X, I grew up with the internet. I evolved with it from email to local bulletin boards, to AOL, to IRC and beyond. I had a LiveJournal account with a pretty decent following (a few hundred followers at one point, which at a time when internet access was a luxury and computers were still prohibitively expensive for most was pretty great I thought). As online content became more of a “thing,” I also just assumed that since I was already generating such awesome and engaging content I would one day become a wildly successful content creator, rewarded with fame and financial security just for sharing my awesome opinions with the rest of the world.
I have been seriously disabused of that notion, mainly because I’ve seen firsthand the amount of work required to making a living by being an online content creator through several professional and personal relationships. Not to be too overly dramatic about it, but I’ve seen some things that will curl your toes my friends. Suffice it to say that for most of the people I know the amount of time, effort, and stress involved in just trying to make the equivalent of a 40-hour per week job with no benefits at minimum wage is so overwhelmingly huge that many of them have said that simply getting a job at the local Wal-Mart would be more financially rewarding. Many of these people loved what they did and the intangible benefits often outweighed the financial ones, but I learned a LONG time ago that I didn’t have the entrepreneurial spirit or fortitude required to make a real go of it. Especially because I had a family to support. People who relied on me for health insurance, food, lodging, etc… Much like acting, I had to put the desire to be a professional content creator on the back burner because of my responsibilities. I do not regret this at all. It’s simply a fact of being a parent and part of a familial unit. Over the last 30 years I have tried to make several goes at generating income through “side gigs” that included web development and content creation (blogs, videos, and podcasts), but none of them every amounted to much because I didn’t have what it took to stick them out. The most successful effort I was part of was getting some friends together to write a health and fitness blog for geeks, and the most that netted was a few paid posts for other sites, some pocket change in advertisements, and some nifty free swag (the best being Wii Fit controller and game). This was only after months of daily content created by our team (and predominantly two of us on “staff”), all of whom also had paying jobs and other commitments.
For the longest time I still held out the vain hope that someone would recognize my wit, charm, innate writing ability, and intellect and that I would gain instant overnight internet celebrity.
My Twitter account was the last vestige of that hope. Outside of this blog it was my most prolific public-facing internet presence, with fifteen years’ worth of my tweets. All of that amounted to a small handful of people even acknowledging when I announced I was shutting it down for real (including someone who trends dangerously close to being a stalker at times). My last few tweet storms were, in my opinion, some insightful commentaries on Elon Musk and Twitter, but instead of going out with a bang my final contribution to the bird site was nothing but a whimper.
It is entirely possible that I could have turned content creation into a full-time, well-paying job but I didn’t have what it took to make that happen. Most don’t. Like many careers, the apparent ease of making a living as a content creator (“I love playing video games! All I have to do is record myself playing them and people will throw money at me!”) hides a very grueling reality – Content creation is a grind, the odds of making a decent living at it are infinitesimally small, and one of the worst contributions that the internet has made to the world is the notion that “going viral” is a viable business plan.
I am not bitter about any of this. Honest. This is simply the reality that I had to accept, and in doing so I feel honestly liberated to go back to doing what I was back in my “glory days” on LiveJournal – Writing for a small group of people who engage with my content and vice versa. Doing this because I love doing it, not because I think it’s going to make me rich and/or famous.
Now watch this post go viral…
