So as some of you might’ve noticed, I have deactivated my account on Twitter. I did so pretty much with zero warning and that was because I knew if I didn’t just rip that bandaid off, I’d tweet on the matter but then not actually do anything, finding a reason to stay on that gods-forsaken site to my own detriment.

Twitter was a personal hell and a personal heaven to me. Connecting with many other queer people and exposing myself to issues brought up by people outside of my bubble was amazing, and I am certain made me a better, more authentic person. I was always amused when I was accused of “living in a bubble” by folks who lived in towns 98% white and christian, with no visible queer people, that had never changed one iota over the last decade except to get older and more stubborn.

But twitter was also awful. I think that is an uncontroversial statement. As much as I loved queer celebration, as much as I loved the community and the networking, the whole thing was such a drag. A constant deluge of negativity, hate, and algorithmically generated news feeds to stoke outrage and fuel hopelessness.

I worked extremely hard to minimize the hate I received on the birdsite. My DMs were closed, I often used features to minimize who replied to my stuff. I avoided weighing in on touchy subjects, or getting into the replies. Twitter too had automatic features to filter out what they considered too vulgar or angry. But they were always just a click away, and there were so many false positives…

Recently, I’ve noticed a trend online that I’ll describe as emotional self-harm. I think most of us have done it, hell I’d argue that sites like twitter and facebook thrive on their users constantly subjecting themselves to at least a low, baseline level of emotional self-harm. I know for a fact that there exist queer people who seek out queerphobic spaces to see and read the hate and vitriol not as a way to understand, not as a way to be informed, but actively as a way to hurt themselves. Not in the way that I think many people thing, as a way to seek attention, but rather as a way to feel anything. Negative emotions carry so much more weight than positive ones, and when you’re in the throws of depression, that negativity might be the only thing you can feel at all.

So I, like many people, just got used to that baseline. The waterfall of negativity that existed whether or not you sought it out. The bad news. The shootings. The laws. The debates. The discourse in general. It erodes your sense of worth but you’re addicted to it after a while. You’d rather feel bad than feel nothing.

Which sucks.

Twitter was a wonderful place for many of us, as fraught as it was. Sure you might have random TERFs or bigots show up in your mentions to call you a rapist and a pedophile because you were happy that you were gendered correctly, and sure when you reported the person who called you these things and misgendered you the moderators would always reply back with “they did nothing against the TOS”. But we found each other.

And yeah, I’ll admit, I was 100% “horny on main” on twitter. I don’t give a shit. There’s a lot of hot people floating around out there who are willing to be horny on main with me.

But the new ownership seems dead-set on hurting trans people in specific, likely because the new ownership has a vendetta against us born from his own ineptitude as a partner and as a father. He spent $44B to deadname his ex’s current partner and his own child. To let the monsters back onto the site to drive engagement and push fascist ideology.

And so I left.

I made the decision to leave after reading the news that Trump was being reinstated.

I read the news, went to my settings, and deactivated my account before my mind could justify a reason to stay. It was an impulsive act of self-restoration and self-protection, and I can say I need more of those in my life.

So to all my followers who are almost certainly not reading this: sorry it was so abrupt, but I’m not sorry to be free.

You can find me on mastodon, there’s a link to the right of this post. I am being more cognizant both of who follows me and who I follow. Do not expect follow-backs. Right now I am trying to limit that as much as possible.

I am also on discord, where I moderate several servers, including the Northern Guard Supporter’s discord. That’s probably the best way to find me. My DMs are limited to people who share servers with me. I am not in the mind to hand out my handle here.

You’ll also notice that my contact me page, while still a thing, is no longer accepting mail. After all these years, it’s been 99% spam, and the last 1% was 50/50 hate mail and stuff that actually was meaningful. I don’t think anyone will miss it.

And with that, I think that’s enough. Birdsite bad.