...

Not really, but it is the thesis of this post.

I removed the social media links on my front page (which only linked to Tumblr, Bsky, and Dreamwidth), and I intend to delete my Twitter fully once I save stuff from my bookmarks. Deleting Twitter is something I've been contemplating for years. Removing the links on my front page was a spur of the moment decision a few minutes ago.

Here's the thing: I love the internet. I was made to have a little rectangle in my pocket where I can talk to my friends all over the world in a few seconds. A big part of who I am is my willingness to make friends with all sorts of people and have all types of conversations. I'm not very good at talking IRL, but when I'm on the internet, I can chat like a professional yapper, even if it's arguing with someone.

The problem? Well, as everyone says, it's the damn phone. For me in particular, it's also been my pervasive self-doubt and desire to improve whenever I can.

I went offline before. I've talked about it numerous times - in 2017, I had realized that the social media rot had been getting to me so badly that my fandom anxiety, my brain, and the inside of my physical body between felt poisonous. My mental health was extraordinarily poor, not because of the internet but it certainly wasn't helping. I did several things in quick succession by August of that year: after a month of writing and posting nearly one fanfiction every day as my love letter to fandom, I applied to a new college, got accepted, moved out, lived with friends-turned-roommates for 4 years, and declared my hiatus.

I didn't disappear, though I didn't not. I just stopped posting on social media - and, really, I stopped writing. Writing was the thing that I felt most affected by because of the internet, because I was constantly writing whilst wanting attention and validation, and not getting it (as fast or as much as I wanted to, anyway.) It came to a point where I realized my expectations were unrealistic, too high, and ultimately damaging to my psyche. I could write fine, but I didn't like who I was before, during, and after I'd write something.

I took the hiatus to heal that part of me, because ultimately being a writer and who I am at my core are synonymous, inextricable. But I'd always known I'd come back once I felt more comfortable in my skin, more confident with myself. I figured even before I took that hiatus that I'd always be relatively online, because of how much more myself I felt, how much I appreciated the protection of not being seen. Of text being my favorite way to communicate, both in terms of talking and listening.

Of course, things have changed. Both me and the modern internet - social media, really. I'm not the same person I was in 2017. I learned a lot from my initial hiatus, particularly how I couldn't stop "thinking in posts." That was one of the first things I noticed and made me realize that my brain had rotted, and that I needed to go offline.

I wasn't fully offline; I was on Discord because my friends are there and I like chatting with them; at one point, a friend and I had gotten very into video games that we joined and hosted Discord servers, and made friends with people I still talk to today. The magic of the internet, yay.

But I wasn't really on social media. I didn't feel like I was being watched by the public, that a stranger could stumble across my posts and make judgements on me based a few keystrokes that I made at one moment in time. I didn't know what other people were thinking unless they said it straight to my username or in a voice call. And I thought for myself instead of pandering to the expectations of random people I didn't know.

When I returned to social media and fandom in 2020, I maintained this mindset, which has led me to a few digital altercations this decade. Regardless, I adjusted my approach to what fandom and social media had turned into - even if it was for the worst, in my opinion. I haven't necessarily tried to fit in, because that instinct isn't in my bones. But I like to think of myself as adaptable, changeable, observational of my environment and ever-growing at my own pace, to my own satisfaction.

Still. Social media is not what it used to be. The internet isn't what it used to be. And after 2020, the world isn't what it used to be.

I joined Twitter for the first time in January of 2009. I was a teenager then, with debilitating anxiety about private IMs and incredible loneliness, both due to a soon-to-be falling out with my best friend at the time. I quickly became addicted to Twitter, a safe space for me to say whatever I wanted for maybe someone to reply, for me to chat with friends without feeling the pressure of time, to see posts by strangers or people I admired and heart their posts, or maybe reply to them, so I wouldn't be as lonely as I felt. If anyone asked for my MSN, I'd ask them to join Twitter. In college, I pressured all of my closest friends to make a Twitter because I was on it all the time.

The thing is, the internet is not a replacement for real life. Twitter is not a town square and Tumblr is not a uniquely edgy monolith. We're all people hiding behind screens, reduced to pixels and bytes to encompass a fraction of who we are, oftentimes because it's the only way we can communicate. We form communities of all sorts of fractions of people because that's what we do; we build relationships because it's in our instinct.

But these days, I feel like technology is getting smarter. And we, as a species, are getting dumber.

Not by too much, mind you. But I'm not going to pretend like I haven't noticed how much more confident people are in their two-dimensional thinking, not as a way to be honest and grow, but to feel like a good person, if just for a few seconds, on the internet. I'm guilty of this too - I'm definitely not an exception. But that was what made me want to get offline in the first place when I realized how this attitude had turned into me into someone who was terrified of the world and all of its possibilities, and myself.

Twitter had always been "the easiest way to communicate" in my mind, but now it feels like the easiest way to think. I'm not diagnosing this to everyone, but I'm hardly the first person to say that algorithms are designed to trigger addictive parts of our brain (the part that seeks pleasure, or reverse-pleasure, which is rage), and if you feel like you're wasting your time, you probably are. A lot more people sound lonely, paranoid, favoring reactionary judgment as a defense mechanism if they think a random stranger might do it to them first. And don't get me started on "cancel culture" - because going offline is not the same as dying, but I can see why village mobs were a thing in human history.

But in the wise words of Taylor Swift, our energy is valuable. What we put our energy into becomes our day, designs our brain. And since 2017, I've known that I don't want my brain to be designed in a circuit of 280-character posts, or addicted to the meaningless pleasure of numbers on things I share. I don't want other people's approval to determine how often or if I share anything next when I've always wanted to live confidently, freely, and shamelessly.

That's just me, though. I'm at a different stage in my life, I don't need social media as a crutch like I used to, and I know I've grown as a person. Oddly enough, I even got some of that attention I used to want when I returned to fandom, which was just enough to gain me some notoreity (♥), but not too much that my social expectations have gotten too high. Or maybe it's because of my mindset, but it doesn't really matter. I used to think I'd be on social media forever because I thought I'd be miserable forever. But in 2025, despite the horrors, I can say that's not true.

Twitter's the only thing I want to delete, and I'll still be on Tumblr and Bluesky when I want to be. (I've been on Bluesky quite frequently as of late; if I didn't have so many friends there I'd just make my own fediverse.) This isn't a real flouncing situation, more like a goal. Social media can still be fun for me, and of course I like seeing what my friends are up to. But it's not my social life, and I don't want it to be. I don't have instant messaging anxiety anymore, and I have my websites which I adore and don't feel the need delete wholecloth every few months. I like who I am both online and offline, and I like having things that I don't have to share with others and can just keep to myself (or a bestie in Discord.) Most importantly, I'm not on Tiktok.

I'll end this to say: Back when I was a kid, the internet used to be a toy for me. But that also meant putting it down when I was done playing, and go back to my life.

P.S. Check out a guide to offlining online by one of said Discord besties :)