I've been poking at ways to read Twitter without it being manipulative or compulsive. Here's what I've tried.
- Subscribing to individual user's twitrss feeds in an RSS reader.
- Pros: Can visit individuals instead of an aggregate stream in order to get a sense of the individual.
- Cons: Cannot filter out retweets. Images don't load.
- Checking Twitter dot com twice a day
- Pros: Images do load.
- Cons:
- Three tweets display at a time.
- Stupid "someone liked this" tweets are selected to be shown to you.
- Can't turn off retweets
- There's just too many tweets. Even if you unfollowed a lot of people, you'd run into "there's too many tweets from one person."
- Surprisingly, a lot of the tweets aren't something that can't be understood if you don't have the context from reading all day.
- Weirdly, tweets are disappointing? Again, I think good tweets tend not to stand alone, but rather, are appreciable if you are immersed in the medium.
- I haven't actually tried this lately, but: Tweetbot
- Pros: You can turn off retweets
- Cons: Too easy to open compulsively any time you're frustrated with whatever you're working on. Mute filters are weak. Blocking is done client-wise; does not apply to notifications.
I'm tempted to build a Twitter client that addresses all of this, but investing anything in Twitter is just a bad idea. Maybe I'll just log in and out of Tweetbot twice a day tomorrow.
I'd like to avoid just nuking myself from Twitter completely. I don't have other connections to some of these people and communities.
Also, I have a tendency to isolate myself. And I've cut ties to great benefit in the past. But right now, I want to be careful about it, since I have really busy days and am unlikely to notice the costs of social isolation for years and years. In other words, it's like not really being able to feel pain from cuts. While it's tempting to say, ah, fuck everything, I'm going to a cave, I do need to think of my older self.