It was fun ... until it wasn't

 

I deactivated my Twitter account today.

Just like that, 12 years, more than 4,000 followers, and who knows how many tweets, gone.

Of course it's technically not called "Twitter" anymore and that's pretty much the reason I've left. It actually took almost a year-and-a-half to cut the cord. But when the new owner took over in July of last year and the changes to the site immediately took a turn for the worse, I knew I'd eventually leave.

I've been on the relatively new social media app Bluesky for the last 10 months. In the past week, it's seen an influx of collectors from the old site and, for now, Bluesky really seems like Twitter back in 2013, although without much of the crankiness that seemed to come with Twitter even in the good old days.

 

I know a lot of my regular readers aren't on other social media sites like Twitter or Instagram, etc. So maybe not many here can relate. I admire you folks, really. It sounds nice.

 

But my involvement in Twitter was two-fold. It was to follow the former bloggers on their new information site, and also it was a significant tool in my job. It was how we interacted with athletes and especially how we received a lot of information and a lot of stories.

 

That lasted for several years. As a collector, there was a certain thrill in being able to announce exciting things before I wrote out hundreds of words on the same thing on my blog. The connection was immediate.

 

Aside from that there were -- yes, connections -- with other collectors, the ones who had fled blogs and many, many new ones. I can probably thank Twitter for my writing gig at Beckett magazines and I can definitely thank the old site for developing my collection. In the more recent years of the site, it became rampant with card sellers, and I took part in a couple of them, for my own collection and for trade bait, too.

 

 

And there was the interaction you could make with pro athletes and other big-name baseball people. I interacted with my favorite player in high school, Pedro Guerrero, a couple of times. And it was always a nice thrill when a player liked a tweet of yours. Off the top of my head I can think of former Reds reliever Tom Hume and Cubs reliever Will Ohman liking mine. And of course, where else could you get blocked by a former major league pitcher?

 

In the last year-and-a-half though, the fun mostly stopped. I used the site strictly for pimping my blog posts and buying cards here and there. The ads on the site grew rampant, like every two or three tweets there was some screaming ad, often something questionable or scam-like. The quality of people on there changed, too. I'm not talking political stuff here -- though that is why a lot of people have left -- I'm referring mostly to collectors. A lot of talk about grading and selling cards and other aspects of collecting that I can't relate to and never will. The collecting mind-set changed. Oh, and the plethora of bots on the site was one of the most immediate signs that it was going downhill.

 

Slowly I saw some of my favorite accounts disappear. And then I did, too.

 

I requested the data on my Twitter site and good gosh that's a lot of photos, many of which I don't remember posting or wonder why the heck I did. Then, just to be sure, before I requested deactivation, I went through and deleted as many of my own tweets as I could. We don't need AI bots using my words and pictures.

 

I deleted through four years of tweets and then didn't see anymore. What about the previous eight years? Another fine feature of the new X world, you can't even find all of your own stuff. And that's when I deactivated the account.

I'll miss the few collectors I know who remain over there, hopefully they'll move over to Bluesky so we can have fun again. And I will miss grabbing some cool cards, too. I'll have to find a new avenue for that eventually.

 

 

Twitter was fun for posting some quick thoughts that weren't enough for a blog post, and I'm hoping this new site will be the same.

 

I'm also hoping it doesn't take a crap like that other site did. You never know with the internet. But you remember how they said card blogs were dead? Like ages ago?

Somehow those are still going.🤔