I started my first blog all the way back in 2004—January of 2004, in fact, so we’re closing in on 19 years ago. In those days, I had a pretty fair amount of time I could dedicate to writing, so I posted there a lot for about a year. Then circumstances changed, I had less time, and I posted there less and less. I wouldn’t say I ever entirely abandoned it, but if I ever had any regular readers, their opinions may differ. But it was always at least in the back of my mind.

Fast forward a few years. I’m not exactly how or when Twitter entered my consciousness, but when it did, I was intrigued, mostly because of its implications for my blog. Part of the reason I felt like I didn’t have time to write is because I tend to write long (see: this post). If I signed up for Twitter, I figured I could throw a widget up on my blog so I could post little micro updates in between my infrequent longer posts. So in January of 2009 I became a member of Twitter, hoping to use it primarily as a supplement to my blog.

Well, of course it didn’t exactly work out that way. Oh, I added the widget to my old blog, where it still resides to this day, and I’ve put out plenty of tweets, but not with the frequency I thought I would when I started. There’s too much nuance in most things for me to be satisfied with just a 140-character (later 280) thought, and while I was aware of the “Twitter thread,” it seemed to me to be less optimal than a blog post. So, you know, I did neither. But it was a great place to toss out cat pics, sports takes, and Wordle scores.

Which isn’t to say that I didn’t use Twitter very much. While I wasn’t much of a poster, I’ve always really liked hopping on to read it. As blogs fell off over the years, Twitter was a great way to read people’s thoughts on the goings-on of the day, more or less in real time. Probably the most prominent example I can think of was the night Osama Bin Laden was killed—I watched the news coming out as it unfolded on Twitter, and I woke Brandi up so we could watch President Obama’s address. That was a big deal, but it was also great for everyday news stories, sporting events, pop culture events (I couldn’t wait to hop onto Twitter after episodes of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones), etc. And you never knew when you’d come across something random that would make you laugh hysterically or lead you into some rabbit hole. Just like blogs used to do! Twitter was definitely my social media addiction. 

But then Elon Musk bought it. I wasn’t thrilled about his plans to allow “absolute free speech” that would permit misinformation and abuse to proliferate without consequence, so I was wary of what his leadership would bring. Then the whole thing blew up about charging users to be verified—the whole idea of verification was to help ensure users that information was coming from an account that was actually who it claimed to be. It wasn’t a status symbol; it was a public good. But that’s something that Musk and other billionaires don’t seem to understand. So he sought to commoditize it, right before an election no less…and that was kind of it for me. I haven’t been on Twitter in almost two weeks. And that was before he fired or lost almost his entire staff, putting the stability and the future of the entire platform in doubt. 

I haven’t deleted my account or anything, and I’ll probably go back to it at some point. Maybe even today! For most things I use it for—sports, pop culture stuff—Musk being in charge and his approach don’t even matter (I was really tempted to hop on last night for ridiculous hot takes on a Cincinnati Reds trade, but I held off). But for news and anything remotely serious, I think we would all do well to take anything on there with a large grain of salt, until and unless the verification issue goes back to the way it was. I mean, it isn’t like misinformation wasn’t a problem before, and if anyone can pay for a blue checkmark and claim to be whoever…it’s a nightmare. And that’s assuming Twitter survives in the long term, which is by no means certain at this point. 

All of this is to say, with the uncertainty surrounding Twitter, and all the people who have left whether it survives or not, I’m really hoping blogs will make a comeback. I can’t imagine they’ll ever return to the prevalence they once had, but you never know. As for myself, I’ve been playing around with this new one and trying for a while to get it off the ground, so I’m going to try to be on here more often. This format really does suit me better, anyway. I just need to remember that every post doesn’t have to be a full-on essay; just a paragraph (or even a line or two) is fine sometimes.