why i deleted my twitter account

Apparently getting rid of a Facebook account is not all that simple … when they say it’s deleted you may find that all your entries, news feed items etc. still exist ….

Wouldn’t you want to keep your Twitter account if only to keep someone else from claiming that name? Even if you don’t update it ever again?

So is everything you ever wrote on there just…gone? Is it all really that worthless? I ask that not just of your account, but in the greater sense. Would you ever, say, do the same thing to your blog? Just hit ‘delete’ and flush it all away. Is everything we’re doing here completely disposable?

I wonder when gapingvoid.com will become a gaping void?

Hugh,
Your twitters will be missed, past and present. Did you consider simply letting your Twitter account stay frozen in time for the indeterminate future? I know I (and several folks I know) will miss numerous gems of yours that we had favorited. Perhaps you could consider doing so – I think the Twitter folks have the ability to pull old accounts out of cold storage or something.
Thanks for all the art you create in all forms.
A fan,
Tantek

I’ve always heard toxicity is a function of dose. And then there’s something about moderation that people harp about. So I s’pose if one could Twitter just enough but not too much, that would be nice. You’re right, though, about it being just too easy.

It wasn’t because you couldn’t tweet about anything other than Alpine, Texas then? 😉
But yeah, tools like Twitter, Facebook, et al encourage a fascination with the minutae of life. Makes it much harder to concentrate on the things that require uninterrupted though.
Good luck with the book!

It’s become a 24/7 conversation like a stadium chat room instead of a microblogging platform now – I enjoy being connected to everyone, but I understand why you want that hour or two back each day. Very bold move, kick ass on the book and dont look back…

Wow, does your cartoon ever resonate for me. Although for me, the midpoint between when I started blogging and now – when I was first getting seriously derailed – revolved more around politics than tech, a pattern which has more or less continued. (Case in point: 80% of all my recent blog posts are twitter digests; another 15% or so are either explicitly political or explicitly tech-related. Which leaves – if one is assessing things generously – maybe 5% of content that is in line with my original blogging intent; that is, it favors literary narrative over polemics.)
Finding balance is a precarious and difficult feat. (Or we make it so, through all our collective and individual distractions.)
In any event, I quite respect your choice here, and hope it bears fruit for you in terms of improved focus and attention to matters of craft, the stuff you live for, the stuff you love.
And which, of course, you’re incredibly good at.

Wow, Hugh, I guess you *were* serious.
Didn’t think you’d delete the account though, figured you were gonna just stop posting to it. Or that you were kidding.
I feel like you deleted part of my email inbox. Part of it that I was saving because I liked it. I don’t go for that inbox zero stuff… I save the things I like.
I’m bummed about losing the ability to chat with you on twitter, but really kind of even more bummed about losing one half of tweet replies and DMs between us. I’d have copied those if I knew this was what you had in mind. Bummed that all the tweets of your I had in my favorites are also gone. I guess I should have backed shit up, eh?
I can totally see why you’d rather work than tweet, and can even understand having to take a nuclear option to avoid “accidentally” getting back into it. But I wish you’d left the frickin’ pages up and just locked yourself out of the account with a password you couldn’t remember or something.
And yeah, I know they were your words and you have the right to do whatever you want with them, etc. Just wish you hadn’t.
Drastic measures, man. You know what? Fuck. That’s really all I have to say about it. I’m fucking pissed off. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

After your excitement and evangelism of twitter, this comes as a total shock to me.
And this “too easy” reason is not a meaningful explanation, is it?

If it means more cartoons and writing I’m all for it.

Hugh,
Its admittedly been to long since I’ve spent some time here but I was following you on twitter.
I enjoyed your updates but I admire your decision to commit to the tasks at hand which don’t delude your efforts.
All the best.
Tim

Sad to hear that, Hugh – but you gotta do what you feel is right for you!
Good luck with the book.
Regards
Neil (dungeekin)

Fair play to you for knowing where to spend time for best effect. I like your drawings more than I liked your tweets because your drawn characters on cards stick with me longer than your typed characters on screen.

Aw, I’m so sad! How is your prediction supposed to come a reality without you there!?
https://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004000.html

Hugh on February 29th:
“Note to World: If you’re not on Twitter, I don’t want to make friends with you.”
Funny how things turn out 😉

What an apt cartoon. Instead of using technology to talk about other things, all people seem to talk about is technology itself. Crazy, crazy world.

Thank god for that. Now you just need to convince Scoble.
I personally enjoy your considered and stylish posts to be unconfined by the twitter 140 characters. Hopefully you will return to blog posting a little more frequently, even if it is ‘just’ the cartoons.
I enjoyed texting my friends but when I stopped we had even more to talk about over a glass of wine. I am now online only three days a week, it feels like breathing again.

why is this a loss? Spent way to much twitter time talking about the Texas move. We get it, you moved to a small TX town. zzzZzzzz

I’ll miss having you as part of my daily twitter stream, Hugh, but definitely understand the decision.
It gets far too easy to just enjoy the content of others and not create your own … and the 140 chars is often enough to satiate that need to express one’s self, but not nearly enough to make an impact.
I look forward to seeing the increased output of cartoons though.

Good choice… i need your cartoons 🙂

We’ll miss you on Twitter, but I agree that it can be a time suck.
Looking forward to the book!

You will be missed! I enjoyed getting your updates from your travels and from Alpine, but I suppose you’re looking for more creative and thoughtful media than 140-character tweets (and 2005 was a good year for blogging).

One less Pillar right?