When you use anything for over 15 years and it looks like it might just change drastically for the worse it’s hard to just ignore that fact, ya know? So, my twitter-cred receipts:
I started as banannie7 in March 2007 because someone else had banannie. They posted once. By February 2008 I had my preferred handle.
(I don’t know why I didn’t grab the handle annie but I either checked and it was taken or I just went with banannie.)
I already had a blog named banannie so it was my online persona.
I remember the original public page that included everyone on twitter.
The map that showed were ALL THE TWEETS WERE COMING FROM!
I remember the “cat fixing the PC” fail image
and of course the fail whale.
I was included in a newspaper story about Twitter in May 2007.
I wrote about Twitter (as an online thing) in my blog and had a few very popular articles but I don’t have those receipts since I took my blogs offline years ago. But for awhile I was a top rated account in some random Twitter Elite in New Jersey list. I didn’t and don’t understand it, but there it is.
I made (& lost) friends on Twitter. I learned a lot about the world, wonderful and horrifying, on Twitter. I learned a lot about people, how we’re so much the same and so very different.
I grew personally, grew professionally, and crashed spectacularly. All on Twitter.
None of this matters. None of this is particularly interesting. I don’t know what will happen now that Elon has bought Twitter to play with. Maybe nothing, but I doubt it. But Twitter has had upheavals before and survived, because those of us who use it don’t really have other great options. I only use it for input- I rarely tweet these days and get little engagement when I do. Many of the early players have moved on. I’ve moved on.
I’m not leaving, I don’t have any reason to go, but I get why folks will.
I follow reporters, lawyers, historians, activists, people who inform or inspire me. Funny people. Creative people. I’ll miss that if they all leave.
