J.D. Cunegan

It’s not easy to walk away from something you’ve been a part of for almost 15 years.

Yet that’s just what I did two weeks ago, when I finally pulled the plug on my Twitter account (yes, I know about the name change, but I’ll never utter the new name unless I’m professionally obligated to do so). I created the account in 2009, and for nearly a decade and a half, I had a place to pontificate about race cars, plug my books, and rant about whichever powerful dingus was getting away with being an asshole this week (which, let’s face it, was almost always this orange dude who failed at real estate and just about everything else).

But I could do no more. I had been using the platform less and less over the past year, instead devoting more time to my Instagram feed, rebuilding my presence on Tumblr, and helping a new platform called Spoutible find its footing.

Engagement, an issue for me when Twitter wasn’t a flaming, clogged toilet, has practically disappeared. An experience I had carefully curated so as to not be inundated with fascist, racist, and other problematic elements had fallen by the wayside, Twitter’s new owner apparently deciding we all needed more MAGA in our lives.

So with the inmates running the proverbial asylum, and everything I once enjoyed about Twitter now a burnt-out husk of nothingness, why was I staying?

Pulling the plug wasn’t easy. It’s hard to change nearly 15 years of habits.

And for the most part, I don’t completely base my habits on the behaviors and political dealings of high-profile individuals and companies (note I said completely). This might not be a popular opinion in some circles, but I find doing so can be more stressful and prohibitive than anything.

To wit: at what point does it end? You refuse to eat at a restaurant because you find out they fund anti-LGBT causes, then you find out the alternative you had been using has its own skeletons. What do you do when seemingly every company is unsavory and problematic in some way?

Because let’s face it: in capitalism, everyone’s messed up in some way. Do we simply decide to partake in companies and products who are less problematic than others? What about those companies that are better keeping these sorts of things quiet than others?

To say nothing of the fact that sometimes, boycotts affect people other than those we’re trying to hurt. Like Chik-fil-a; the boycotts likely affect individual store owners and managers more than the people at the very top of the food chain. Likewise for Amazon; your refusal to order through their site likely has no effect on Jeff Bezos.

Besides, that ignores the fact that a lot of people don’t have those options. For some, it’s a matter of access. “Don’t shop at WalMart” does nothing to help the family in need of groceries, with no means of transportation, where WalMart is their only viable option.

If we’re going to get into the business of boycotting everything, we also need to talk about accessibility and privilege–because for most, the ability to boycott is just that.

Twitter is different to me, though, because its ownership is so obviously, cravenly corrupt and horrible, and there is an equally obvious alternative. Not Threads (because there’s the Facebook guy), and not BlueSky (because there’s the old Twitter guy), and not Mastadon (because ow, my head):

Spoutible. A place with no algorithm, where user safety and peace of mind are priorities. You build the community you want on Spoutible, and it’s better able than just about every other platform at dealing with trolls and hate speech and all the other issues that plague practically other social media platform.

Spoutible offers more user control in building and crafting the social media experience; in a lot of ways, it’s what all the other platforms would be if they actually bothered with content moderation and punishing abusive users.

Would I have left Twitter without already being on Spoutible? Hard to say, but I’d like to think I would’ve found my breaking point anyway. It’s not just the fact Elon Musk is everything but the “real-life Tony Stark” he was once billed as; that was the final straw, but Twitter had become as much silo as echo chamber, and if social media’s not social, then what’s the point?

Apologies to the two people who interacted with me on Twitter, but it just wasn’t worth it for me. Come join me on Spoutible, eh?

I promise we’re not racists or fascists or antisemites. And those who are get shown the door real quick.

Because social media shouldn’t be stressful. That’s the opposite of the entire point.

About J.D. Cunegan
J.D. Cunegan is known for his unique writing style, a mixture of murder mystery and superhero epic that introduces the reader to his comic book-inspired storytelling and fast-paced prose. A 2006 graduate of Old Dominion University, Cunegan has an extensive background in journalism, a lengthy career in media relations, and a lifelong love for writing. Cunegan lives in Hampton, Virginia, and next to books and art, his big passion in life in auto racing. When not hunched in front of a keyboard, scratching a pencil over a piece of paper, or with his nose stuck in a book, Cunegan can probably be found at a race track or watching a race on TV.

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