So...I've ranted about social media before. Here comes another rant, but with a quieter tone. Pull up an e-chair and listen to my tale of using Twitter for 11.5 years around the warm fire of me burning my Twitter presence down. I think I've defollowed about 9000 people over the past two years. I think I'm about just above 500 now. My goal is to be down to 300 by the end of the year, and then going inactive. I still might pop unto Twitter here and there, when things break, but Twitter as a platform for communication and research for me will be depreciated January 1st, 2020.
A little history. I don't remember how I found Twitter, but I joined in July of 2008. I really enjoyed about the first four or five years on Twitter. I engaged a lot of bright people that without social media I never would have been able to send messages to. I learned a lot. And for me, as a Christian political science major who believes in conspiracy theories, I had a lot of information to share that I thought people needed to hear. I was not alone, thousands upon thousands of conservative Christians like myself joined the platform and spread information far and wide that the controlled media would not. I think Twitter laid the ground work, or at least played a huge role in getting the Tea Party movement going, also the Occupy Wall Street movement as well, and later in getting Donald Trump elected. Also Twitter helped promote many how shall we say, non-mainstream viewpoints to America and the world at large. What was once the domain of alt.conspiracy and secretive modem based bill boards is now somewhat mainstream.
Well, the powers that be didn't and don't like that. So they are hell bound to change Twitter into something that controls movements like above. Twitter and other mainly Northern California based social media platforms have seemingly all come together and started laying the ground work for controlling political discourse on their platforms. I started noticing sometime in 2016 that even though I had more followers then ever my tweets were getting less and less impressions, less retweets, and worse my account got flagged!
At one point I toyed with running adds. I had an indie internet "radio" show on for a few years with a friend of mine. Later I thought about making videos. I thought maybe with a slight boost of promoting both would be the boost I needed to maybe get to the next level in social media. So I ran a few ads. First, a 10 dollar promotion. It was amazing how much more impressions my tweet got. Then I accidentally ran a 100 dollar promotion on a random tweet. More on how that happened another time but I was pretty angry that it happened. The short version was it was a butt dial promotion from my phone. It was either that promotion or another 10 dollar promotion after that to a video that I made that got my account flagged as being ineligible to run adds. I tried to fight it then and I was referred to was the terms of service agreement with no specific complaint. A few years went by and I tried to get eligible again, just to see, and I think I could if I pushed for it, but by now my account is so nerfed that I decided to not pursue any kind of Twitter promotion as it is a waste of time.
Anyway, about 2013-2014 I had some what would later become some pretty big names follow me on Twitter. Later about 2016 I noticed a lot of them defollowed me, as maybe my account was no longer "big enough" to warrant a follow. That kind of urked me. I also tried to grow my account but not crazily, adding maybe 20-50 follows a week. This would get me over the 10,000 follower mark, and then everything came to a head.
I realized that I was in mostly a conservative echo chamber. This didn't bother me at first but there are a lot of non-conservative people...libertarians, anti-NWO types from all political stripes, some specialized information types...I followed them but I never saw their tweets on my timeline any more. Just more and more retweeted blue check retweets, the same ones over and over again. I was kind of already ticked off at the nerfing, which would get worse each year 2016 on. Now this seeing the same stuff over and over again. So I decided maybe following more and more people was a bad idea, or at least the ones that were going to just share the same information I was already seeing over and over again. So about 2016 I stopped the drive to get more and more followers every week.
Then some other things started to happen. Let me phrase it like this. Knowing government commits false flags: good. Believing every event in history is a false flag or controlled event I would argue bad. Believing in very powerful secret societies: good. Tweeting lore about these societies and believing because you have an internet connection and read a few blogs that you are suddenly an expert in all things hidden: bad. I, a conspiracy theorist/realist, found myself debunking more stuff than I cared to. I went from RTing people with similar views as myself to challenging a bunch of well bull crap. And it became kind of a losing battle. It actually became pretty frustrating for me, and I'm convinced that "the NWO will overthrow the NWO to create the real NWO." Sounds like a dumb saying but I'm kinda proud of it. I also came up with the concept of conspiracy hipsters...people who get a little knowledge and run with it way farther than they should. I believe these types will be used one day thinking they will be doing a lot of good by over turning the existing orders to bring in a utopia but in the end will be very disappointed. This groups is growing and I got bored and frustrated fast dealing with them.
Then came "Q". I knew from the get go that Q was a psyop. Why? I've been researching this stuff for 30 years. I've seen the deep throat types used to manipulate the unwary. I've also learned in life that almost always, though not always, if it looks to good to be true it usually is. You can read about what I think of Q on other post on this blog, but essentially it was depressing to me, but not surprising, that so many people did and still do buy into the Q psyop. There IS some good research and information being spread by the believers, but I'm pretty sure the over all mission of Q is to deceive. I grew and grow tired of people buying into "trust the plan"that doesn't exist rather than being the plan that does.
Also there is the issue of my relationship with God. I hate to say this but I'm not perfect. I mean I'm not even close. A lot of Christians readily agree that they aren't perfect, but in reality they kind of think they are. They know they have sin, and know they need a savior, which is great, but I unfortunately went beyond that. Without giving out too many details, I have been dealing with an issue for a long time. Sometime around 2018 it really hit me that I had to deal with this issue. It had to go away. But I had been fighting this issue for so long without success it really spun me into a lot of confusion about my faith. Ultimately I determined I could not fight this issue. It owned me. And the only way for any kind of relief was to beg Jesus every day to admit that I was to weak to fix myself and that I needed Jesus to fix me. If He didn't it wouldn't get fixed. Praise God that He honored that request. I still have the ability to fall if I try real hard, but Christ has changed me from the inside so I'm different and having victory over this issue. I bring this up because through this all I realized my walk as a Christian had really deteriorated. I knew I wasn't praying, reading and really studying the Bible, or hanging out with Christians like I needed to be, but I didn't realize how far I had strayed. I really needed to focus on Jesus. Some health problems kicked in too that reminded me I am very mortal and sooner than I think I will give an account of my life to Jesus. Was I happy with my current ledger? Not at all. So I determined to spend more time with Jesus and to put Him first. This would require time. And being on Twitter all the time was the easiest thing I could cut back on to gain some time, one of the few things actually.
I also realized that I am a horrible worker. I didn't used to be. But at my day job I've deteriorated into a bored under challenged person who goofs off way to much. The guys I work for are very gentile, nice men who I'm sure are well aware of my condition but for now haven't dealt with it. But in the past I've seen them deal with people who are no longer a fit for the company, and I know that if I don't change I will be shown the door at one point, which is really kind of crappy for me to do to them. They like me, and it would suck if I kind of forced them to fire me, which my wife thinks that I'm doing without consciously knowing it. My company stuck by me when I brought home a special needs child from overseas to be our son, that took a lot of time and they let me get away with not being as productive as I should. I also battled pretty severe health problems for the last two summers, and was a wreck for weeks at a time. They let my lack of productivity slide there too. But this won't go on forever.
I spend way too much work time on Twitter. I've tried to cut back but when I get bored or am in between needing to get stuff immediately out the door for work I'm on Twitter. In the coming year I have to make a big choice. I have to decide if I want to stay with my company, and if I do really work hard and do the extra mile and earn my keep and payback some of the investment they have made in me, or if I need to accept that I'm just burnt out at my job and I'm just not going to do that. If I'm not, I owe it to them and myself to bow out, and do it on the best note that I can. With that in mind, in my spare time I really need to be growing my skills. I have a dream of starting an indie game studio and cranking out games, and I've already started on my first one. My immediate goal is to keep my job but work on projects I enjoy at night even though time is at a premium. One more reason for Twitter the biggest time suck in my life should probably go.
Another reason (I added this section in later) is that I was hoping in the beginning that this Twitter thing could parlay into something more. At first my information tended to be unique and hard to find, though towards the later years a lot of stuff I was sharing started to be just adding to the noise/repetition. One of the reasons I dialed back much of what I tweet. I was followed by some big names, I received a lot of flattering comments, I knew I had good info. But I stalled at one point. My sister always said I had great information but I needed to tone down the Christian angle. My response was always, but that is why I am there. It all relates to and points to the soon return of Jesus and the depravity of man. That is what I tweet about if someone who follows my tweets really gets me. But maybe she was right. I tweet military stuff, but a lot of military experts want to hear military stuff without the occasional plug or tie in to how it relates back to Jesus. The same with geopolitics and foreign affairs. Side note when there were a bunch of "rate yourself on Twitter" type services I was number one in geopolitics for awhile. I was top 10 in a few other areas, at least according to one site. Anyway, my videos, podcast, and rantings like this one are all not super polished. These two things maybe kept me from going further than some of the people who I considered peers that are now big time. I probably just didn't "have it" too to hit mass appeal. I was fine with this, but when the Twitter nerfing really kicked in, and my tweets were just going off into cyberspace without anyone seeing them, I knew I was putting a lot of time and effort into something that was giving back diminishing returns.
Lastly, and perhaps the biggest reason for me to bow out of Twitter, well not the best reason (spending more time with Jesus is the best reason), but I guess the second most important reason is my family. My wife and I are more like room mates at this point. Both busy, we work on different schedules, we spend more time texting then we do being together. Also my son is special needs, and although the day care center and the school are making amazing process with him, he could use more care to promote his progress from Mom and Dad. The first year he got some, but because the schools are doing a good job with him we have become complacent. I need to invest more time mentoring my son. And again this takes time, and one of the few things I can cut to retrieve back some time is researching and Twitter.
Wow, this is getting to be a long post. If you actually read this far, thanks. The point of all this is, Twitter and researching is a huge time suck, other things are requiring time, plus staying on Twitter is less and less valuable as Twitter's owners tweak the algorithms against people like me. All of this leads me to a conclusion, it is time to go. There are also other reasons, but these I've made peace with, like each tweet leaves a trail of how you think and who you are that might one day be VERY detrimental to surviving in the coming global society, if you can call it that. I made peace that if I took the stances online that I have that there would be blow back. So far there actually has been some...but minor. When I argued for the cancelling of building a mosque where the twin towers stood I got some weird things happen to me, like out of the blue a woman asking me to do web work for them and when I looked at her facebook account it was all indonesian military people...and of course her account vanished soon. I think that was an attempt by islamics to get mor einfo on me. I started getting calls from Chinese numbers at night, maybe in part to a big stance against Chinese global activities and trade on Twitter. I had a discussion with someone who wasn't adversarial but they worked for the man...and then their account disappeared. And a few times people have accused me of doing heinous things that or course I didn't do. One person shared personal information about me...but that was minor as it is pretty easy to find and I expected it to be found. I knew I didn't fully cover my tracks and if I wanted to I'd have to start my social media presence all over, which I was too lazy to do. This is actually a really good reason in the coming years to have a very apolitical presence on social media. But it is a reason I won't accept. I also won't accept the Nor Cal social media platforms gaming their algorithms to control political discourse. No. I hope they crash and burn if they continue to do so which is a shame because many of these platforms are amazing. Amazing but not if they are choosing a side and becoming active combatants in the culture war.
So, to wrap this up, I first stopped the gain as many followers as you can game. Then I started to defollow a few people that seemed to retweet repeated content. Life events have come up that demand my time. Twitter is the easiest thing now to cut back on or cut off to free up that precious needed time. Twitter is now something that is not as useful to me to pursue information sharing and research as it once was. So twitter has to go. It has taken me about two years to finally pull the plug, and I still haven't officially done it. I'm on gab at Gab.com/infocyde. Parler @ infocyde as well though I don't use it. I might post more blogs, and if I can find a viable alternative to youtube I might make videos again.
For those who "knew" me as a fellow veteran in the meme and link slinging wars, I salute you. It has been a pleasure serving along side you. To the few, the precious few, who actually were affected by the information I've been sharing, God bless you, my efforts here were not in vain. To the people I learned from and who have encouraged me over the years, you know who you are, I hope we can stay in touch.
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