Farewell, Twitter
- SJ Williamson
- Jan 26, 2025
- 3 min read
I created my Twitter account @atypicalsjw for 2 reasons in early 2022 for two reasons:
to immerse myself in Academic Twitter in order to learn more about my field outside of school
to help prepare myself for going on the academic job market in 2025
I decided to delete my Twitter (or if you call it otherwise, X) yesterday. Here's why.:
you cannot rid yourself of the promoted hashtags on the right side of the homepage. Many of these hashtags trigger my anxiety as they often focus on natural disasters such as earthquakes and wildfires, fear-mongering for WWIII, and alt-right propaganda. These hashtags were one of the initial reasons for me disliking Twitter. I tried to not let it get in the way of participating in Academic Twitter, but it definitely had a strong negative effect on my life.
More and more people I followed in Academic Twitter began leaving for BlueSky or other social media once Elon Musk bought the app and changed its name. I didn't want to create another social media account, so I never moved to BlueSky. However, I wanted this account to hold some kind of meaning close to my original intent for creating it. As more and more people left, I felt less and less connected to the community I sought to be a part of.
Twitter privacy and advertising is ridiculously hard to limit. I went to my account's privacy settings and they make you manually uncheck every advertising category you are associated with, and if you make it too far down the list, Twitter will stop working and you'll have to continue unchecking all those advertisement boxes later. Among my advertisement categories were things I didn't want to see, including Ivanka Trump, Bitcoin, #MAGA, Donald Trump, and sports. And I know they made the process of unchecking a long, annoying process on purpose. I no longer want Elon to have access to my data. If this is just a small way of impacting that, so be it.
Elon Musk (and other toxic billionaires who are ruining the world) is no longer acceptable for me to support. I never was a fan in the first place; he never really quite sat right within my soul when I learned more and more about him. When he bought Twitter, I wasn't a fan. When he changed it to X, I wasn't a fan. When he became involved in Trump's new DOGE, I wasn't a fan. When he did a nazi salute at Trump's presidential inauguration, I no longer could stomach Elon Musk. People can argue about what they saw and what his intentions were, but I know what I saw. I also think that blaming the salute on autism makes a lot of ASD-ers upset. ASD is not an excuse for harmful behavior. Neurodivergence is not an excuse for repeating an obviously racist, fascist gesture. I feel like the argument of his salute being because of his autism also sets us back decades, believing that ASD-ers aren't capable of knowing right from wrong or other false prejudices about neurodivergent people. If having a Twitter account supports Elon, then I am done with it.
I'd be lying if I said my social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram were safe. Just last week Instagram ruined the aesthetic appeal of my carefully curated photos on both my personal and professional accounts. With Meta's Zuckerberg also aiming to follow in Elon's steps and suck up to Trump by rolling back DEIA initiatives and taking away even more privacy & fact-checking of users, I am concerned. I use my Facebook and Instagram for different purposes than I used Twitter for; I stay in touch with family and friends back in California, run student organization accounts, and like to stay up to date with memes in case I get a job in social media after I graduate. Still, these billionaires' behaviors are concerning. I'm worried for our privacy and rights. If this is all I can do to show my disgust with their behavior, so be it.
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