#14 Twitter and Me (2009–2024)
A post-mortem
Like many other academics, I have stopped using Twitter. I haven’t properly transitioned to another social media platform because the energy required to re-build “an audience” exceeds what I can realistically engage with at this stage of my life. The need for it has also diminished for me compared to the past, especially as a young academic. Bluesky seems like a promising alternative, but I’ve yet to invest time in it, and I’m not sure I really want to. But since Twitter played a non-negligible role in my professional and, if I’m honest, personal life for about a decade, I thought it would be fitting to write a brief post-mortem of my relationship with it. At one point, I was a fairly intensive user; I had around 20,000 followers and a blue tick—back when it couldn’t simply be purchased. Now it sounds a bit like saying “I used to be big on VHS”, but I wanted to reflect on what Twitter brought me and what it took away.
If I recall correctly, I created my first Twitter account in 2009 but didn’t actively use it until 2012 or 2013. I’m old enough to remember life before social media and witnessed the arrival of Facebook in Europe, which I joined in the summer of 2007. Facebook certainly consumed a lot of time, but I primarily saw it as a tool to connect with people I already knew—initially colleagues, then family, and even distant relatives over time. It felt relatively organic in the way I used it. Unlike some, I didn’t use Facebook to engage publicly or accept friend requests from strangers; it was more of a low-cost way to stay connected within my circle.
Twitter, by contrast, served a different purpose. I joined it to follow news and updates from people I didn’t know personally but found interesting, and to occasionally share ideas or research with a broader audience. My follower count grew significantly after I published a blog post titled “Why Academia Resembles a Drug Gang.” Despite its somewhat clickbaity title, the piece delved into an analysis of the dualization of the academic job market. The blog went viral, and sharing it on Twitter brought me a substantial number of new followers.
As an academic, Twitter felt like a way to reach a wider audience more directly and immediately than traditional channels, such as newspaper op-eds, which often involved significant gatekeeping by journalists. On the few occasions I wrote op-eds, I found their edits oversimplified my points in ways that made me uncomfortable. I wanted to maintain full control over my ideas and present them in a way that bridged the gap between the obscurity of academic publishing and the oversimplified, mainstream narratives typically favored by journalists—a niche that was still intellectual but catered to a more engaged, "nerdy" audience.
Over time, I began using Twitter more intensively—to share research findings, tweet out lame jokes, and increasingly provide original content outside my narrow research specialization. I’d find interesting data related to current events, create graphs, and tweet them. I discovered that I had a knack for making complex topics accessible to non-specialists. When Twitter introduced threads, I started using them to explain social phenomena in a narrative format, some of which became quite popular. At one point, I achieved a modest level of recognition—even being recognized by someone in a supermarket. There was a brief window, I think around 2016 or 2017, when you could apply to obtain a blue tick if you demonstrated some credentials of public engagement as an academic. I had written for the Washington post and other outlets, maybe that’s why I obtained one. There was probably some Matthew-effet involved in the blue tick factor, as my follower count increased further as people assumed that it signaled that i had some credibility in some area. I was sometimes contacted for comment by journalists that had seen my tweets, even on a topic very distant from my area of interest. I realized that twitter, even if its reach among the public has always been marginal, played a significant role in how certain social fields (journalists, politicians) gathered information and opinions.
If I’m honest, what drew me to Twitter (and blogging before that) was the quick gratification of sending something into the world and seeing it resonate immediately—especially in contrast to the long, arduous process of academic research, which requires careful wording and often takes years to reach an audience. However, I avoided diving too deeply into the interactive side of Twitter, such as endless arguments with other users. Unlike some, who treated Twitter like chatting with friends at the pub, I was cautious about how my tweets reflected on me as an academic. The only thing I likely failed at was masking how much time I spent on Twitter instead of handling the endless administrative tasks that come with advancing in academia. I did engage in a couple of Twitter feuds over the years, which I regretted afterward. I was called a bully once for making fun of Matthew Goodwin.
My disengagement from Twitter began during the pandemic and escalated with the Ukraine war. While I, like everyone, followed the news, the pandemic was an all-encompassing event that touched every aspect of daily life. Consuming updates on the death toll on Twitter only added to the emotional toll. Then, with the onset of the Ukraine war, particularly in its early days, I found the intensity unbearable. Staying up late to follow twitter updates about Europe’s largest nuclear plant under siege felt overwhelming. It gave me too much anxiety.
Finally, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter marked the end of my relationship with the platform. The user experience degraded, and my enthusiasm for engaging there dwindled entirely. I may be biased in saying that there was some meritocratic element in the old twitter - you gained followers if you provided interesting analysis or some insight into things, not necessarily because you paid for it. At some point it appeared that as I was tweeting less and less, fewer and fewer people were even seeing my tweets because of how the algorithm was structured. From then on I just stopped engaging.
On balance, I believe Twitter has been professionally beneficial to some extent. It provided me with a level of exposure I wouldn’t have otherwise achieved. On several occasions, journalists reached out to me within minutes of tweeting something, and I’ve often been told that people discovered me through my profile. At the same time, I’ve sometimes felt uncertain about whether Twitter—or social media more broadly—was valued within my institution as a legitimate form of engagement or as part of "work." Those in positions of influence over one’s career are often from a generation that doesn’t necessarily see it that way.
The biggest downside, however, is the enormous time sink it represents. Time spent on social media is time taken away from the things that truly bring me joy: playing with my kids, cycling, drawing, or listening to audiobooks. While Bluesky might not yet have the technical and political issues of Twitter, it still inevitably means less time for life