Twitter was paramount in bitcoins growth and its battles. Was a very cool quirky place eons before that too. Even though I have a very old account, bitcoin was the reason I started using it more frequently.
I met an incredible amount of good ppl there. Some of the best ppl I know was directly or indirectly because of the bird app. Hired ppl. Connected ppl.
There was/is absolutely nothing like it.
It's hard to imagine how the direction of my life would have gone, it was greatly impacted by it.
Crazy place! A true public square, I'm incredibly grateful for it.
Covid killed it, or at least accelerated its dystopian trajectory.
US politics gravitational force also doesn't help. Nothing on earth can scape use politics, everyone and everything deal with its consequences.
Even decentralized things. But they fare better. See bitcoin.
Anywho... Being with the X account deactivated over the weekend was quite nice, it had been a very long time since I fully disconnected. It is still a lot of signal, a lot of Lindy. But is also became an open sewer. (Why?)
The algorithm evolved for maximum conflict. It's hard to even describe how much it makes your skin crawl. It finds all the shit you don't want to read by the ppl you don't even knew about existed and vomits on you. Even with the large muted word list. It's not a healthy place.
Maxium engagement = more ad views?!
I don't want the firehose all the time. Humans are not designed for that. Different moods different content. Different types of engagement. Maybe even different clients for different sub network graphs. It's time time evolve. I think Nostr takes us there.
BUT I think Twitter's value can't be ignored. It is still a ginormous network.
That's aside from good ppl I know there, where it is our only comms channel.
I plan on drastically decreasing my use of it, truly limiting to posts about Nostr, projects I like and amplifying bitcoin things I believe in. The goal is to trend towards end of use. Hopefully it gracefully coincides with Nostr rising as the new public square. Protocols must be open. There must algo choice. Or we are doomed to doom scroll and ad target conflict.
I no longer will allow myself to scroll.
And will try to starve the beast as much as possible.
GN
