No.

This won’t make headlines, or even have an impact, or change the fate of the world, but I’ll be deleting my Twitter account this week.

It joins Bandcamp and Spotify, which likely means I’m slowly retreating into irrelevance, but to hell with it.

I still remember the thrill of Twitter in the early days. I remember sitting on a street corner in Tokyo one morning, wondering where to go, tweeting about it and getting a lovely answer almost instantly. It was a compression of distance, a possibility of outreach and genuine connections.

Truth is, I stopped actively engaging with Twitter over the past years, and the Musk saga didn’t help increase my appetite. Still, I was prepared to wait and see…until his weekend tweet/retweet about Paul Pelosi. (1)

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me.

It’s one thing to know you’re interacting in a space that also harbours profoundly deranged individuals, but good god—this is the bloody owner now. And less than a week in. And after posting his “letter” to advertisers:

Musk claimed he’s buying Twitter not “to make more money” but to “try to help humanity, whom I love.”

“Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Musk wrote. “

So much for that.

Musk later deleted the tweet. Which only shows how much of a trigger-happy idiot the guy is. It’s fascinating, in a way, how these powerful men are really just dicks throwing billions around like paper towels. It’s all impulse, without a hint of reflection. Little intelligence, too, which is even more astounding.

And call it a sign but when I logged in this morning, there was a spam crypto-scam DM waiting for me: first time I’ve ever received a non-legitimate personal message on Twitter. So yeah.

I leave you with what I wrote in my last Twitter thread. Gotta say: I’m awfully grateful for this space, and all of you.

Later

…

There has to be a limit. Over the weekend Musk proved, again, who he is, and what he intends Twitter to become. Free speech? It’s irrelevant without basic human decency. And truth. The kind that springs from reality, I mean.

I’m leaving this up for a few days, just to thank everyone who gave Twitter its soul. There were connections, there was banter, and outreach across oceans, meetings of minds that never would’ve met. There was a promise that is now irrevocably broken. After this, I’ll be deleting my account. Will it change anything? Nope. But it’s the only power we have. We can only stand up and say enough, and move on. So thank you, Elon, for making that crystal clear.

If you want to keep in touch, I still have an active website where I post stories and thoughts and articles. I still reply to every email message I receive. No algorithms, no dumpster fires and no billionaires. Just us.

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1. I read that piece from Robert Reich after I’d made my decision. But this is essentially all of it, right there.