{"id":722,"date":"2009-12-21T01:59:43","date_gmt":"2009-12-21T06:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/?p=722"},"modified":"2009-12-21T01:59:43","modified_gmt":"2009-12-21T06:59:43","slug":"why-i-would-ponder-life-without-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/12\/21\/why-i-would-ponder-life-without-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 Why I Would Ponder Life Without Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"My<\/a><\/p>\n

Tonight, a friend told me that my online life is huge in a way that I share every single moment. Not only is the level of data simply enormous but my sharing causes confusion and leads to negative attention. In a blog post from last month titled, “Embracing The Hate<\/a>” I wrote about the situation If find myself in much too often. I wrote:<\/p>\n

This value greatly exceeds the loss of giving people more crap to throw at me. Sharing selectively has been my goal ever since AdamsBlock happened. Share less, more often which results for a lot of unusable information like linking to a news story or a funny video. This info isn\u2019t leveraged for hate and only serves as filler for the really important stuff.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s how it’s been lately. I do share a lot but most of it is useless bullshit that no one should really care about like links, photos and tweets about nothing. I try to imagine if members of my family tweeted like me and how that would paint them. What I realize is we as humans all have regrets, faults and “aspects” of us that would be considered unacceptable in modern society.When is the last time a married man looked at a beautiful woman or a married woman thought about her life with that other guy that she knew in college or how often does a guy think about quitting his shitty job and simply tells a friend later over beers. Everyone has these moments that aren’t shared or spoken to anyone other than our own self-conscious and that’s where they’re supposed to remain.<\/p>\n

\"Twitter<\/a>I disagree because I believe honesty and being translucent is an enabler to great things. Most of you that have started following me in the past year have really seen the Adam who is censored. That’s pretty hard to believe but it’s true. The last 12 months have been full of censorship and I’ve had many people who I knew 3 years ago upon joining Twitter who told me things have changed and asking me if I’ve changed or just my tweets. The answer is both but I consciously leave tons of things out and I’d rather not.<\/p>\n

Twitter has been a tool that did a lot for me. Twitter is responsible for 80% of my blog’s traffic, 45% of my Flickr photo views. My friend Scott Beale posted a tweet linking to my resume for my move to San Francisco and helped me land a great job. Another fellow san franciscan sent me a link to an awesome apartment that I live in now. A friend helped me get free tickets to shows in Vegas, another give me a place to crash for the night in a Los Angeles Hotel and another random Twitter friend bought me a beer in Seattle. Nearly 75% of my income is based on Twitter related work and, until just 3 months ago, all of my relationships were based on people who I met through social networks. I did realize the problem with that and fixed it.<\/p>\n

\"Me\"<\/a>Lately, everything I do doesn’t start with Twitter and it has lead to some great projects and relationships but I admit that there are so many opportunities that never would have happened had I not joined Twitter back in 2006.<\/p>\n

If Twitter makes life so awesome, why am I contemplating walking away? The main reason is relationships and people. I have realized a few things. Going back to my first point about humans and how flawed we are, I realize that the micro-celebrity concept is applying to me. The more I share, the more people have things to hate me about. Think of it like dating. The first date is attraction based on their looks or “replication value” that you assume they have (money, personality, beauty). As you go out a 2nd and 3rd time, you learn more about them and soon realize how incompatible or different you are from that person. There comes a time when you deal with it which would make you shallow and fake or you are honest and tell them that things aren’t really working out.<\/p>\n

\"26,000<\/a>Twitter is the same way. You see my follower count and tweet count or you like a photo that I post and you follow me. Soon, you learn I love coffee, my family and that I don’t like crowds or partying. I don’t like certain kind of music and I tweet about my dates and how they went. You learn everything that I am willing to share and soon you follow me for different reasons. Either it makes you feel good or bad and sometimes you’ll just unfollow me.<\/p>\n

This relationship I’ve had with Twitter and the people that follow me is very interesting and it’s something I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around but what I do realize is that more people don’t like me or rally against me and what I do based simply on what I tweet. This is terrible and it’s something that I can’t really help. I have no way of taking each follower out to lunch and sharing with them truly what’s going on. I can’t say hi in person and get to know them. This is the fatal flaw of online social networking.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>One big life change that happened recently really opened my eyes to this. I realized that so many people assumed a lot and said a lot and spoke of me a lot in conversations simply based on what I said on Twitter & my blog. It’s human nature to talk about other people but too often do people talk about others with an ignorant mind. I’m ignorant to so many things and I try my best to not talk about things I don’t know anything about. This is an effort I fail at way too often.<\/p>\n

So I could curse those who don’t understand me and don’t understand what I’m really doing but I can’t because I gave them no reason or tools to know the real me.<\/p>\n

So why would I leave Twitter? To put a stop, once and for all to the confusions, doubts, gossip and failures to understand the real me and what I really have to say. There is so much that you and I could learn from each other but we can’t do it in 140 characters and we can’t do it over email. It has to be in person with a handshake and a hug and until that happens, we’re just assuming we know what’s up and only getting 5% of the story.<\/p>\n

I might still be on Twitter by sharing interesting links and photos and blog posts but the concept of sharing “what I’m doing” may soon come to an end. I hope this post cleared some things up. Thank you, as always, for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tonight, a friend told me that my online life is huge in a way that I share every…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-social-media","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-bE","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":605,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/11\/11\/embracing-the-hate\/","url_meta":{"origin":722,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 Embracing The Hate","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"November 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"My translucent lifestyle didn't really start until I got Twitter back in 2006 despite blogging and sharing really personal data online since I was 13. 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