Timothy Noah1. I've decided to quit Twitter in solidarity with NPR. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter-government-funded-media-label
2. I'll deactivate my account tomorrow so I can make my goodbyes. That will lead automatically to my account's deletion after 30 days.
3. This is nowhere near the personal sacrifice it would have been six months ago. I find the site to be of diminishing utility in promoting my writings for the New Republic, Backbencher, and other publications.
4. Mostly I'm quitting because I've wearied of the narcissistic toad who owns this site. I just can't justify associating myself with him anymore. Indeed, I've struggled with this since he smeared Paul Pelosi.
5. I've always had my doubts about this site, which is why I was relatively late to join it. It became a sort of addiction, but I recognized at the same time that it trivialized political discourse and created pitchfork mobs that frequently ...
6. ... led to the firings of people I respect, like Al Franken and James Bennet. The Twitter mob also found some deserving targets but I was never comfortable with the process, and even when there were real crimes the punishment was absurdly disproportionate.
7. This was never a healthy medium and of course Donald Trump brought it down to a previously unimaginable level of squalor. Still, I might have hung in there if the site hadn't been purchased by someone who made being on Twitter feel unclean.
8. So I'm outta here. You'll find me on Mastodon and Post and Facebook and I'll probably try Notes. I'll experiment for awhile to see which suits me best. So Twitter, farewell. As I said, I'll deactivate later today.
9. PS The best place to follow what I write is my Substack newsletter, Backbencher, which is free. You'll find that at https://timothynoah.substack.com
πΊπππ DEFEND DEMOCRACY π±πππππ’ π½@TimothyNoah Are you talking about the resignation of United States Senator Al Franken? I am acutely aware of that, as one of his constituents. Franken was weathering a storm of an increasing number of reports of previous incidents that could be regarded as sexual harassment, with all of us here in Minnesota still supporting him staying in office until those reports were impartially investigated, when national Indivisible and Franken's women Democratic Senate colleagues (other than his fellow Minnesotan Amy Klobuchar) began calling for his resignation, with the special Senate election in Alabama in mind. I thought that they were ahead of sentiment in Minnesota (and told national Indivisible so), but the Senate colleagues, especially, signaled to me that Franken was losing effectiveness in Congress as my state's representative, so I accepted his decision to resign.