Dear Twitter,
I know we haven’t talked much lately. And I thought I should check in to tell you why.
As everyone knows, you were my first social media love.
I was a clueless virgin before I met you. And, like a school girl, soon after we started seeing each other, you became my whole world.
You were all I could talk about for years. You introduced me to people I’d never met before. You opened me up to new opportunities. You taught me a new way to communicate. You recharged my business and infused my career with passion and purpose.
I’m sure you hear this all the time, but I fell in love with you. I thought you and I would be together forever.
But, after four years or so, things started to change between us…
- When I talked, you were too distracted to answer.
- You rambled on endlessly about yourself.
- You focused more on news than relationships.
Now, of course I know that you are not “a thing;” you are a network. And if I don’t like the network I’ve built, I can just build a new one that better suits my needs. (In that way, you are so much easier to have a relationship with than a boyfriend.)
But these days, I’m tired and burnt out on the shilling, the noise and the echo chamber of social media experts talking on social media about social media (There are 181,000 of them, at last count.)
The thought of starting all over again is exhausting.
So instead, I just find myself pulling away.
True, every so often I feel the same old spark. A voice reaches out and touches my heart and I get all woozy inside and think, “Yes, this is what I’ve been missing. This is important and special.” But those moments are sadly few and far between.
The reality is, you’ve changed. You break and distribute news now way more than you forge friendships. And you do it so damn well, I can’t help but be happy for you.
But I guess I need a little more humanity in my social media. So, I need to make some changes in how I spend my time.
I just wanted to give you a heads-up, since I know we’ll continue to see each other. (And I’d hate for it to be weird if you saw me sneaking a kiss with another social network at a party sometime.)
Just know that you’ll always be my first love, Twitter.
For that, you’ll always be special to me.
-Jen