On reflection the title doesn’t accurately convey the sentiment. Twitter, didn’t make me unhappy, it’s just an online service, it can’t make me feel anything. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to have written “I was unhappy using Twitter”, but that would have made a crappy title.
I wrote a post entitled How to Find Happiness Now on Twitter. The post wasn’t about how to find happiness using Twitter, or how to be happy on Twitter, it was mostly just about the fact that I’ve got a Twitter account linked to this site.
My Twitter username is How To Find Happy @howtofindhappy. Yes I know it’s dreadful but that’s all they had left on the shelves after the unscrupulous Internet Marketers had cleaned out everything else with the word happy in it.
In that post I said that I’d previously owned a Twitter account and indicated that I used it quite prolifically for a while before allowing it to become unused. I also said that I’d just deleted the account and explained why, except I don’t think I exlained it well enough.
In the comments Hadi asked the question:
This Twitter thing is really interesting – what did you used to get out of it that you now feel you can do without?
I thought this was a great question and I wanted to give it some thought before I replied, because in truth the answer to that question didn’t spring directly to mind. In other words, I didn’t really know.
I’ve given it some thought now and I’ll start by explaining that I started using Twitter simply because other bloggers I knew were using it. I signed up for Twitter pretty much at the time when I thought it would help my online profile and be useful for promoting my sites – and also the sites of my online friends.
My Twitter career also coincided with the time I was having some real difficulties in my marriage.
As I’ve mentioned somewhere else on the site, I’m stay at home dad and look after the children while my wife goes to work. It’s quite a nice arrangement but it’s not without its downside. One problem for a stay at home parent who has drifted away from their friends over the years, is there’s a distinct lack of adult company and conversation – and this problem is exacerbated if, as in my case, you’re not communicating with your spouse.
When I look at it now, having looked at my life with the content of the book in mind (banner in the right sidebar) , I can see that I was using Twitter mostly as a means to avoid doing the things I didn’t want to do, like mend my relationship or attend to the household finances. It’s easy when you’ve got an “online business” to convince yourself you need to be on the social networking sites connecting with other people and building relationships, after all, that is, as Hadi points out, a legitimate use.
And that’s exactly what I was doing but my use of Twitter went beyond that. I did use Twitter to promote myself, and my sites, and I also used it heavily to promote my friends and contacts. I convinced myself that it was in my interest to do this, and besides which I enjoy the idea that I was helping other people. I was legitimizing my avoidance.
What I should mention, and it hasn’t really come out in my writing here, is that I’ve got a wicked sense of humor and I love to exchange good-natured insults with people. I don’t think this is a problem per se, but it becomes a problem when it’s done purely for escapism and pleasure.
It was nice to connect with other adults and exchange witty remarks because it helped me forget my troubles for a while and made me feel good about myself. In some ways it was about validation i.e. my wife might not like me at the moment but I can’t be that bad because look at all the friends I’ve got here. But as we all know, followers or friends on social networks aren’t truly friends.
Don’t get me wrong, the dozen or so people I was regularly conversing with were mostly people I count as friends, but as for the other 700 people in my Twitter stream, I had no real connection with them at all and in the end the whole experience became an empty one.
I realized that my presence on Twitter wasn’t helping my “business” and my sense of humor was possibly harming my cause.
I also found it time-consuming. Checking Twitter every day and keeping up with the different conversations takes time, and that’s time I could have been using to do things of greater value – things that are aligned better with my values, but of course I didn’t know what my values were back then, I only knew that what I was doing didn’t feel right, i.e. I just wasn’t happy tweeting all day.
It’s pretty addictive too. If you leave a witty remark (or any other remark for that matter) for someone else, it’s easy to sit there for 10 minutes waiting for a reply, so that you can get a bit of back and forth banter going. It’s enjoyable but it’s not necessarily a great use of time.
So it turns out that I was there mostly through avoidance and also as an outlet for my social isolation by using humor, and I now know that this doesn’t fit with my values (Identify Your Values and Start to Find Happiness). Humor didn’t make it into the top eight and the trivialities of tweeting didn’t fulfill my need to do things of “significance” – and this value is in the top eight.
It’s not that I think Twitter is evil, or totally devoid of merit, it’s more that I wasn’t using it in alignment with my values so I was never going to be happy. I ended up seeing Twitter as part of my unhappiness, not a major part but it featured too significantly and I had to let it go.
I’ve gone back to Twitter now simply because I recognize it can be beneficial if used properly. Thanks to the book (How To Be Rich And Happy) and what I’m doing here (documenting my journey to happiness), I’m finding my validation in other more constructive and creative ways that do align with my values and as a result I feel happier.
Hadi, that was a really great question and I enjoyed the opportunity to think about it. So thank you very much, firstly for asking the question and secondly for taking the time to leave the first comment on the site.
Andy
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Thank you, Andy
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
No probs Andy.
I agree with you on the social isolation front – I had a long spell as a stay at home dad, working from the kitchen table with with 2 young children running around (can’t imagine what 4 would be like!)
Twitter didn’t exist then (there were forums and chat rooms only) but I found my release in popping up to the village pub in the evenings.
I quickly grew bored of the misogyny, racism and generally extremist views of the typical lads night out and so disappeared from the scene (I guess this just didn’t fit with my values).
It’s why I don’t use twitter socially.
It’s why I much prefer blogs and commenting on them.
For me, the difference between twitter and blogs is analagous to banter at a bar and an evening spent chatting to an old friend.
With a blog, the author has time and space to let their character, thoughts and feelings be expressed fully and over time, as a reader, you come to think of the author as friend (if that’s not too creepy!).
I worry that, over time, the anonymity and lack of accountability that social media affords, will do more harm than good to society.
Apologies for the rant!
Hadi
P.S. I’m enjoying your use of on site SEO with page interlinking, use of keyphrases, etc!
Hadi,
It’s great that you’ve been there on the stay at home dad thing, you know how tough the kitchen table work environment can be. I guess that all along I may have been telling myself I can’t do it, when maybe the opposite is true.
I totally understand what you mean about blogs and their authors. For the longest time I only used to comment on people’s blogs as I didn’t have a blog of my own. I kind of got hooked into their stories and would drop in regularly to keep up with the conversations. I felt a bit like a stalker as sometimes I wouldn’t even leave a comment.
Thank you for saying all that you said, but the absolute best thing you could have said was what you said at the end about the SEO etc. I am so pleased that you noticed. I’ve worked hard at it and not in a million years did I expect anyone to notice it, let alone mention it, so, thank you Hadi.
Cheers, Andy.