Recently I had been going on Twitter a lot instinctively when I was bored. I guess I liked the interactions but tbh it’s so bad. Left Twitter has 3 kinds of people: (1) Acts like they are the embodiment of Marxism, nobody else knows anything and nobody else reads according to them. (2) Doesn’t care about theory or material conditions, just looking for a controversial side to join and loves posting about Russia and Jackson Hinkle/Haz. (3) Wreckers (on purpose or not makes little difference) who want to shut down any and all acts of popular resistance because “nothing ever happens”. “What are these campus protests even doing for the people in Palestine?” They say while ignoring Yemeni and Lebanese rallies with posters addressing students to continue their protests. And I would add the folks trying to become a “character” or something or like the voice of Left Twitter, but usually they fall into of the previous 3 categories (feel free to add any that you think I missed). And that’s just the Left. At LEAST they have decent takes to start with that they can ruin slowly over time. Then you get to the libs who have all been scratched. Then you push further right and you get people with usernames I can’t even say here and yet they aren’t banned from Twitter. Not to mention all the incels putting Ancient Rome on a pedestal when they would probably be slaves or merchants at best. I tried to quit Twitter a week ago and it was tough at first, but now I wanna make it like 3 weeks. If I’m still not missing Twitter I’ll prob just keep it for when friends and family send me posts from it but I probably won’t scroll thru.
I whittled mine down a while back to where I’m following like… 20-30 people. And I don’t really expand it much, with min requirement being they are a) anti-imperialist or b) communist and anti-imperialist. I also put it on Following rather than For You so I can see stuff as it appears, not just what it thinks I should see.
There is, in my mind, “Left Twitter” which can range from anti-imperialist communist to “person who says government bad sometimes” and then there is Anti-Imperialist Twitter and Communist Twitter which are more niche, but have less of these problems where their politics are all over the place. I value it for sharing/boosting important info, but not much beyond that at this point. The “hot takes” argument aspect of twitter is tiresome and long has been, and it’s deteriorated a lot in terms of bot replies that are transparently obvious spam, since Elon “we will coup whoever we want” Musk took over.
I’m not planning on leaving it any time soon myself with the curation I have and what I can find through it, but I wouldn’t blame anyone who would want to leave it. It’s one of those websites where some of its most active people also hate on it regularly and for good reason.