Hi, everyone I didn't know still cared about my Twitter feed. I wanted to just say my rushed and disorganized goodbye to Twitter before Elon finally manages to completely destroy it. I'll probably update this as I have more thoughts or information. I also wanted to do it this way because Twitter, ultimately, is a terrible platform for any kind of nuance or long thought (which perhaps is the actual reason it should just go away).

Saying goodbye to Twitter is something I've been planning to do for years, but I never quite had the push to finally just do it. I don't really use Twitter much anymore, the algorithms don't work for my preferred style of communication (I learned years ago the platform tends to reward more toxic, shill, True Believer communication styles that I really don't want to be good at). A big part of me has no problem with the platform falling apart and everyone finding their greener pastures, which probably will take the form of nested, organized communities of like minded people, rather than a giant panopticon of inmates screaming at each other like Twitter has been in it's end stages.

At the same time, I say my goodbye with some sadness. I was a very, very early user of Twitter, which I first installed to follow some friends, then later on for my work, as Twitter at the start was tightly connected to the Ruby on Rails community, being the first major platform to be built with it (and indeed, at the time, it was more famous for being a working Ruby on Rails app than for what it ended up becoming).

More than a small amount of credit for the success of my tech work goes to Twitter. Neocities itself started as a tweet that went viral (for my standards), giving me the push I needed to implement and launch it. It was also crucial in getting the attention (and donations) the platform needed in those early days to succeed. Twitter has definitely been good for that in my life.

I could write a book on why Twitter failed, but I won't do that here. I'll just add to the conversation that I've always felt like Twitter has already been on the way out for years, the victim of short-sighted leadership and bad algorithm choices, and this is just the latest catastrophe on the way out.

My first and best piece of advice for people wondering what to do after Twitter is simply to spend less time on the doomscroll machines and spend more time with people around you, in real places, in the real world, creating things. There's never been a better time to start improving yourself than right now, when Twitter finally grinds to a halt from lack of the institutional knowledge required to run it, and you have less news feed crap fighting your ability to sit down and read a good book, to reunite with an old friend, to put your time and energy into real things and work on becoming the self actualized person you deserve to be.

I'm still working on Neocities, I like working on Neocities, and I plan to continue to do so. I can give you the hype sauce about how it's the Next Twitter, but I don't want that for it and nobody else does either. It's fine as it (mostly) is.

I also plan to continue to do more 90s web archive restoration projects through Restorativland, and there's millions of sites yet to be restored, most of which have never been seen since their platforms were shut down decades ago.

My history on Twitter hasn't been perfect, but thanks for following me throughout the years. Even if we argued about something, I think you're great and hope you have a happy and fulfilling life surrounded by people that love you, and that you can love.

If you want to find me, don't bother with Twitter, just send me an email. You can find it on my web site. Feel free to make one too.

-Kyle