A little reflection on the microblogging website where I used to not live a day without a little update but now is a daily chore, like reading the newspaper

With all due respect to the laws of SEO, I will lift this condition for the sake of writing about a special place in my life as a digital native. Forgive me Google and digital marketing experts for I have sinned as a digital manager slash strategist by passion and by title.

Every time I look at my Twitter profile nowadays, I feel nostalgic for a lot of reasons.

Let us go back between 2010 and 2016, when I was arguably at the height of my tweeting powers. While most folks turned to Facebook for their status updates, Twitter was my safe space along with Tumblr to share dainty details about my interests, whereabouts and sometimes brutally hot takes about trending topics.

2010 to 2013 me on Twitter may be my golden era. My tweet activity was off the charts. I couldn’t live a day without tweeting about how my day went, what I ate or watched, and which celebrity I like or hate at the moment. It was during those early years when I felt obliged to follow every celebrity with a Twitter account. Many of these since-unfollowed names later on made me question why I followed them at the time. Admittedly it was because I just HAD to follow them.

In high school, there were schoolmates I followed knew merely because they were well-known around campus and were considered the “cool kids”. A lot of my other follows were batchmates. Not just because I knew them but I was also curious about the latest buzz around us seniors. Almost every single day, I had at least one reply to my tweet/s from a classmate or an online mutual. So every time I’d bump into a girl in the corridors who I just had a Twitter chat with yesterday, we’d just exchange approving glances.

Every achievement or awesome thing that happened in my life had a corresponding tweet. Whether it was making the Dean’s List or a lunch out at Taft with friends, I tweeted about it. Saturday hangouts at Shang or library time with fellow Comm Arts peeps? Boom goes the tweet button. Super stoked about our college basketball team’s first championship in six years or that University Week concert? Tweets or they didn’t happen. Everything be it about school or whatever rocks my socks, I can tweet in 180 (then 240) words or less.

Things changed a bit when I started working in 2015. Yes, I was still tweeting at least once or multiple times a day. However, I was not as actively chatty with my followers as I used to be. I then mostly tweeted only out of necessity – be it live posting hockey games or recommending new dishes to try. Sometimes I’ll chime in about trending topics, but I became more careful because it can result in getting ratio’d. Celebrity culture and society issues especially. Nowadays it seems that everything you say on Twitter can land you either in everyone’s good graces or hot water. Fandoms have morphed into a battle royal of fans against each other for the title of “Best Fanbase”. If you ask me, there Twitter moments that made me cringe and scream in delight which will take a whole day to list them all.

But you know what made me lose any remaining energy to be a power Twitter user? Whatever Mr. Musketeer did since his takeover. Name one thing you loved about Twitter in 2013 – the odds that it remained on the site are second to none. No more third party apps so goodbye Tweetbot and hello official messy Twitter app with the annoying suggested tweets. No more earned verification and hello to blue checkmarks to trolls. Imposing rate limits, aka the number of tweets you can only see per day, was what made me write this post on why I miss the golden age of Twitter.

Don’t get me wrong: I still enjoy Twitter but only for the sake of keeping up with the world. It is still my to-go platform for breaking news, hockey stuff, humor, and thoughtful threads from trusted users. I’d tweet from time to time still but only when it feels worth sharing, like a cute puppy video for a timeline cleanse. It’s just that I may have outgrown the need to post about every single thought or life update. Some thoughts may be better off here in a blog or my planner where I can rant and rave without backlash. Selected treasured moments head straight to my Instagram feed instead where most mutuals are more active these days.

So there you have it. My little throwback to Twitter, a platform that became a defining presence in my online life. Certain things have made me lose a little bit of enthusiasm to post regularly (except retweets) as I grew older. Now I am just using it for news and commentary purposes on stuff like sports, pop culture, memes, everything else. Whatever fits your vibe, perhaps.