Looking back, I believe I can pinpoint the exact day I loved Twitter most: May 24, 2011. I was in a small Oregon town for work, coping with loneliness and stress in a shabby motel. With a 22-ounce bottle of high-proof beer, I whiled away the evening by churning out a random assortment of tweets: an article I'd read about the hunt for wild garlic in Quebec; images of an apocalyptic Los Angeles mural; my reasons for adoring the 1985 B movie American Ninja. In a reflective moment, I also managed to craft an earnest observation about my job: The more social media makes journalism an Everyman's game, I mused, the more I'm inspired to dig deep for non-digitized sources.
To my surprise, that tweet earned what seemed at the time like an avalanche of approval-a whopping six retweets, plus an admiring reply from a minor internet celebrity. This validation sent me over the moon: The account I'd always thought of as mere public scratch paper actually had an audience that considered my ramblings worthwhile.
I kept chasing that same high over the next decade-plus, but it mostly proved elusive, even when my retweet counts occasionally soared into the thousands. As the platform ballooned, I became self-conscious about drafting tweets. I worried that any slight misstep in phrasing or context might reveal to the masses that I am, in fact, an idiot. I regularly found myself sucked into trivial controversies over some pundit's stupid take; once the thrill of scrolling through the resulting dunks faded, I'd feel dirty for having once again been turned into a cog in the Global Outrage Machine.
This story is from the July - August 2023 edition of WIRED.
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This story is from the July - August 2023 edition of WIRED.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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