Should I Stay Or Should I go?

Trying to be truly honest about why quitting TwiX completely is hard

Over the years, Twitter has caused me both extreme joy and extreme pain. One of the worst weeks of my life was caused by a Twitter pile-on so severe it affected my mental health both acutely at the time and less acutely long term. It changed my thinking about politics and the world of campaigning in ways I can never unsee. It lost me friends - or people I had thought were friends who were clearly not - and it caused me personal pain and professional and political damage.

And yet, while I stepped away from the app until the furore died down, it never occurred to me to leave the app altogether.

As we are all discussing doing so now, I have seen a lot of handwringing - especially from journalists - about what will be lost in terms of platforms and sources. All of which is true and real, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. It certainly isn’t for me.

I am also a bit allergic to flouncing. I have an ego on me - as I will detail below - but I can’t imagine getting to the level of self-importance where a public declaration (this is separate from the private messages I have had from people who are leaving and wanted to say a personal goodbye to an online friend) would matter to anyone. So I promise - not least because I haven’t fully left Twitter - that this isn’t that post.

What I wanted to do here was talk about the things that Twitter has brought me, Emma Burnell, over the years and what I will be losing as the app dies and my use of it goes from the obsessive state it once was to the lesser state it is now.

The ego on me

Let’s start with that ego bit. I have around 18k followers on Twitter. That’s not that many compared to some people - certainly not those I obsessively compare myself to and find myself wanting in comparison with. But it’s not nothing.

I’ve also gone viral a few times. And while that has its drawbacks (it’s very hard to concentrate on anything else when your phone is constantly buzzing) I’m not going to lie, it’s incredibly gratifying. A well-crafted joke or observation that is then ‘liked’ by tens of thousands of people is an ego boost. It just is. And when you’re a writer and your craft is in putting the right words next to each other in just the right way it’s also encouraging when enough people think that’s exactly what you’ve done.

I’ve never bought a single follower in my life. (And you can always tell who has. Those accounts that suddenly appear overnight with thousands of followers trying to muscle their way into prominence usually fail because at its peak Twitter had a pretty good bullshit detector. The problem now is that the levels of bullshit now overwhelm everything else.) This means those 18k followers were come by organically and over a long period of time. That’s not easy to give up on.

Back in 2017, I was given a ‘blue tick’ - which mostly meant that I had provided a scan of my passport to prove that I am who I say I am. That verification wasn’t available to everyone, and so (again, I’m not going to lie) the day I got it, it felt good. It felt like I had reached a level in my career that was worth aspiring to.

Much like not buying followers though, I saw no point in buying that bauble of achievement. So once the rules changed I saw absolutely no value in paying for a blue tick. Very quickly I went from seeing a blue tick against someone’s name as a sign they could be trusted with a news story to the complete opposite.

But I am very nearly 50. I was in my 30s when I signed up for Twitter. I am exhausted at the idea of trying to build this all up again. Never mind the fact that I don’t yet know which of the replacements for Twitter is going to win the race to do so - if any. I’ve started over a few times in my life both personally and professionally. I started on the ground floor as a politico later than most, I started as a playwright in my 40s. I got my Masters degree in the same decade. I lost half my body weight. I am not so much afraid of change as aware of how exhausting starting from scratch is.

But it seems that with all that Musk has done to the platform, change is coming whether I like it or not. So my choice is not Twitter as I knew it or not, but Twitter as it is now - with all the interesting people (and me) spending a lot less time on it or trying to rebuild the experience I once had elsewhere. Just older, more tired and a lot more jaded.

So beyond the ego, why would I want to do that? There are two parts of myself that I think that I - in particular - have got out of my time on Twitter that will be under-served on any other platform at present.

The child in me

No nickname has ever really stuck with me. I seem weirdly impervious to them. Many have tried over the years. A particular favourite was Inamard [as in grumpy] Kingdom Burnell, a spectacularly niche attempt that could only have come while working at a local government think tank.

One attempt, while I was in early secondary school so about 1986/7 was ‘Alison Moyet’ who those who designated reckoned I looked/dressed like. In part, this didn’t stick because I was clearly more flattered than irritated by it. Years later, Alf herself followed me on Twitter and we’ve had several interactions ever since. If you could have told that little girl that one day she would be sharing jokes and chats with the singer of Only You she would have been thrilled.

A few years later I moved from Secondary School to a separate sixth form centre in a completely different borough and had to make a bunch of new friends (which I did. This is not a sob story, those years at sixth form were a very happy time for me). One of the ways I bonded with my new fellow English Literature classmates was to obsessively quote and requote jokes from the previous night’s Mary Whitehouse Experience at each other. A profound love for - in particular, Rob Newman and David Baddiel bonded me with Nathan and Rory who were two of the nicest and funniest boys I had ever met. Years later, David Baddiel followed me on Twitter and we’ve had several interactions ever since. If you could have told that teenager that one day she would be sharing jokes and chats with the History Today bloke (and she could have told her new friends that) she would have been thrilled.

When I was at university, a friend pretty much forced me to watch Emmerdale. At almost exactly the same time, a character called Marlon Dingle was introduced. I have grown up with Marlon ever since. My relationship with Emmerdale - and thus with Marlon - outlasted the friendship and my viewership of any other soap opera. Years later, I saw a picture of Mark Charnock, who plays Marlon, on Twitter wearing a red rosette and canvassing for Labour. So I decided to follow him on the platform and in doing so I found out about an absolutely charming podcast he did (does still sporadically) and my fandom of that has brought me to meet Mark’s co-host the brilliant writer Paul Coates in real life and many, many happy interactions with Mark over the years. I even squealed like a delighted child in the middle of Paddington station when I got a call out on the show recently.

All of these moments that delighted the part of me that is still made up of all these people I have been was made possible through the platform that Twitter used to be. I’m not particularly celeb-obsessed. I meet quite a few famous people through my work and I’ve always prided myself on my usual levels of professionalism. I treat Prime Ministers and Congresswomen and Actors and Pop Stars usually just as I would treat anyone else (mostly meaning I tell them dumb jokes). I find that whatever your inner child is doing or saying inside, it’s better usually to treat people as people not superheroes. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t always going to be that inner part of you that is - at least a little bit - saying to yourself THAT’S BLOODY FATIMA WHITBREAD. And I expect that famous people know and understand this inner dichotomy that most of us face when faced with them.

Paul Coates left Twitter some years ago now. And I have been thinking about him a bit recently because our interactions have been significantly lessened since. He lives a completely different life from me in a completely different part of the country. Twitter was our meeting ground - our shared space. It is that and the relationships I have built on there - not just with the famous but with countless others - that I will miss.

The Childless Cat Lady in me

Which brings me to this.

I live alone - well alone with a cat. This has been the case for the vast majority of my adult life and that has been (mostly) through my choice. But that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes get lonely. I have an active social life and a hyperactive professional life. But right now it’s Sunday and I have no plans and no one to turn to and share a witty (or banal) observation with.

However much I value my solitude, I am a gregarious person. Anyone who has sat through a meeting with me knows I have no bloody filter and I have also made significant choices to be as much ‘me’ as possible (and by that, I don’t mean in that terrible way that rude people think being obnoxious is a replacement for having a personality - or at least, I guess, I don’t mean just that). My Twitter persona is me. I am my Twitter persona. I do tend to just post my passing thoughts, random observations, stupid jokes, political rants and reactions to the news. Whatever.

Some people really don’t like it. In which case they unfollow me which is fine (well mostly. It can hurt a little at times, and I am trying to be warts and all honest here). Some people find me hard, as I do have this weird life that is hard to pin down and that is reflected in the scattergun nature of my social media output. But that does mean that this output is a true reflection of the multitudes that I contain.

Sometimes, when I am lonely, Twitter could be a comfort. Social media isn’t successful because it’s evil and poisonous and killing society. It can be all of those things, but we make a bargain with it because of all the things it gives us. It gives us company, validation, insight and a bloody good laugh. We all need those things and I can’t always get them simply from myself and the cat.

What I’ve tried to set out here is what it is that I am losing as Twitter dies. I think there are broader lessons too in what all of us are losing.

Twitter became a town square where everyone came together. Yes, there were always Nazis on there. Yes, there were people whose progressive values I might have shared but their implementation of which was so toxically delivered that I thought they were doing more harm to my causes than their opponents ever could. But they were largely not the majority of the experience.

My experience of Twitter recently is that the algorithms have meant that the Town Square is now a cesspit. My cautious experience of Blue Sky is that - because it is largely dominated by people who have moved away from Twitter for the same reasons as me, it is in danger of becoming too much of an echo chamber. It may improve in this regard as it develops. I hope so.

But we will probably never have again what we had in the early days of Twitter. That space where we were all a little bit more open. Where people with huge followings would share jokes with the likes of me. Where anyone with something witty enough to say might find that amplified. I think that’s a shame. I mourn that loss. But I also think there’s no way back.

So no, I am not flouncing off Twitter. I’m just not on there very much any more (though I will post this there). I’m not yet spending the kind of time on Bluesky I once devoted to Twitter. Maybe I will be a more productive human as a result. But I am not sure I will be as well-rounded a person.

This is the fortnightly free version of my weekly email. I rely, in part, on the income I get from my writing, so I would be delighted if you sign up to get the whole shebang!

The price of this newsletter is now £5 per month or £50 for an annual subscription. You can subscribe by clicking below. Paid subscribers get double the content - access to everything I write on a weekly, rather than fortnightly, basis.

Your support for independent media is greatly appreciated. These projects take work and care, and I cherish your support and recognition.

However, if this option is not possible for you and you want to thank me for this post ) you can also make a one-off donation by clicking below.