I have finally become a refugee.
From Twitter and Facebook, that is.
Last night I deleted both accounts before I went to bed and woke up this morning with such a sense of relief that I knew I'd done exactly the right thing.
I started out years ago on Twitter with 40 followers and ended up with over 1.5K of the buggers. This is not a good thing, as anyone conversant with the horrific phenomenon of Twitter can attest.
Twitter. It's a great tool for keeping up-to-date on whatever news you're interested in; you get the latest breaking stuff first, plus much of the as-yet-unverified speculation. But with that comes a clamouring clinging of hanger-on demons which will eventually deeply wound your sanity if you're even halfway in your right mind to start with.
Some issues, let's face it, are bound to be emotive. Transgender Rights, the Patriarchal control of the globe, Donald Trump...So you make a resolution to rise above the gutter-wiping of the basest Tweeps. I'll just observe, you tell yourself, and take in arguments from both sides - to which end, you include a broad spectrum of class, race and political affiliation in your Follow list. Sounds about right.
But gradually, over months and possibly years, you find yourself taking sides. taking umbrage at the others. Taking seriously the emotionally immature rantings of a faceless archon who uses 140 characters to inflict as much pain as possible. And you find yourself doing this, too; becoming habituated to being as pithily nasty in as short a text as humanly possible to someone you don't even know.
This is the template for all 9 rings of Dante's Hell to coalesce and eventually collapse into a screaming, barking mad black hole of insanity.
And Facebook? With even the best of intentions of keeping it confined to family, you find yourself scrolling through endless reams of photographic saccharine memes, brain-deficient repetitions of somebody else's endless idle time...nope. Just Nope.
And so I left those places. Threw them to the West, iconic icons and all, turned on my heel and walked away.
Because I can't be having with this any longer.
Pic: Paul Kidby's rendering of Esmerelda Weatherwax
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