Leaving Twitter

I continue to have lots of cognitive dissonance about what Twitter has become—so X, I guess—and whether I should leave.

It’s one tool among many for getting the word out about my book and DM’ing people I want to interview. On the one hand, people who I respect have left for good reasons, and I already think future me will wonder why I waited so long. But on the other hand, some people who I respect have stuck around, and I like hearing from them. I am on Bluesky, which I hope can scratch the same itch, and I feel good about my bet on email for the long run. Part of the reason I’m writing this note, I think, is to nudge myself off Twitter. You can sign up for my book or garden email to help me get there, if you’d like ;)

On platform

I think about platform as the ratio of people who know me publicly to people who know me personally. People who know me personally includes people I know and friends of friends (mutuals). People who know me publicly include strangers who read my blog or follow me on Twitter/Bluesky. If I know 1,000 people personally and another 1,000 know me publicly, my platform ratio would be 1:1.

I’d say having “reach” as a writer is when the scale tips toward more people knowing you publicly than personally. The higher that ratio, the greater your reach. I don’t know how much I want reach for the vanity aspect, although I’m sure it plays a part. I want reach so that I can financially support myself working independently with creative freedom. I don’t know how far beyond a 1:1 platform ratio that requires. Having a lower ratio might lead to a preferable life in some ways (e.g. joining a company, working on a team, cultivating fewer but more meaningful two-way relationships).

I came up with this definition of platform ten years ago through a conversation with a college friend in Sherri Moore’s incredibly popular comm law course. I was talking to my friend about the concept and using Sherri as an example. Having taught a very popular class for over a decade, more people know her than she knows personally, I bet. People talked to their friends and parents about Sherri, and the majority of people in her classes didn’t sit in the front row, so they never introduced themselves and never became personal connections. It might be a bad example because quasi-anonymous students are somewhere between public and personal. I also pointed out that at the time my friend’s ratio was probably higher than mine, at least partially because he’d played quarterback at a big public high school in California.

Anyhoo, tomorrow it’ll be 2026 and I’ll probably still be on Twitter.