Why I Deactivated My Twitter Account - Breaking Bad

Social media; with the exception of a rare few, who perhaps have been living on an unknown yet Internet free planet, we all know what it is and we all use it on a daily basis. How many of you click on Facebook even before you’ve said good morning to your family? Those little red notifications mean that the things we’ve posted have been read and approved by our peers using the ubiquitous “like” button, or should I say the like, love, ha ha, sad or anger emoticons, which we can now choose from! Thank goodness I have Facebook to define the way I feel.

One of the most well known icons on the planet 

One only has to go any place where there is a social gathering, be it a café, restaurant, airport waiting room or similar and you will be guaranteed to see the same thing. People, dozens of them, all poring over their smart ass phones. There will be little or no conversation, small children will be ignored, and older children who do not yet have a phone or tablet will be running about or finding other ways to draw the attention of their distracted parents. It is a sad scene indicative of the so called evolvement of our society.

Teenagers "socialising"

It would seem we cannot cope for even five minutes without our phones

For those parents who try to moderate or limit their children’s Internet diet, there will be daily battles as they say despairingly to their children, “Will you please put that down while we eat dinner?” The child/teen rolls their eyes and insists that unless they just send this one message to their bestie, then life won’t be worth living.  My recent experience of this was when my 19 year old step-daughter came to stay and asked one night if we could all watch a film. No problem. The film was duly put on and she spent the entire time looking at her phone! When asked “Are you watching this?” we got a detached “Yeah” as she continued scrolling, tapping and generally not watching the asked for film.

An epidemic of tapping and scrolling

Sigh.     

     

My other pet hate on Facebook are what I call the Facebook Police. You know who you are. The people who seem to have way too much time on their hands and who feel the need to comment on everything and everyone’s posts.

Example; someone asked if anyone knew of a Golden Retriever stud dog for her bitch as she wished to breed from her.  Oh. My. God. You would have thought that the poor woman had asked if anyone knew how she could poison her dog without anyone knowing. She was absolutely attacked by the self-righteous brigade who asked questions such as;

How can you breed more dogs when there are so many wanting rescue?

How can you make money out of your pet?

And on and on. While both questions might well be pertinent, it was NOT what the woman asked. She asked for a stud dog and got shot down in flames. She did not ask for a lecture in the morals of dog breeding.

Another example; a woman posted an ad for an antique baby’s crib. It was many years old and a really lovely thing. Here come the Facebook Police to say that a similar crib is less money in Mothercare. What? Who gives a f***? This is an antique, a lovely old thing, which cannot be compared to the piece of modern plywood in Mothercare. The posts continued as other people added their two penny’s worth. Ah yes, noted another nay sayer, my daughter just bought a crib like this off eBay for only 20 pence, or some such stupid comment. Again, no one asked you, keep out of her business, she’s selling a crib not asking for estimates on what it might be worth. Sheesh.

Another main player in social media is Twitter.  

Another well know Icon

Dictionary definition of the word Twitter;

To talk lightly and rapidly, especially of trivial matters; chatter.

Or as someone on Facebook recently said to me;

“A lot of people talking and no one listening”

Never were truer words spoken; thanks Rupert G J

The Twitter site, which started in 2006, allowed people to send messages or Tweets as they are known, of no more than 140 characters. That should have been my first warning as to the dubious usefulness of this social media. I mean really, what can one usefully say in 140 characters?

As an author I had a Twitter account. It was considered essential for furthering awareness of my books. I’ll be honest, I didn’t “get” Twitter but I duly began “Following” people and was very excited to see new people “Follow” me back. However, the excitement was short-lived and after a very short while, I began to wonder about the value of Twitter. It seemed to me that given the very fast turnover of Tweets, I’d need to be sat there 24/7 watching for new ones and re-tweeting or liking them! It was just something else to do. Something else demanding my time and attention and if I was Tweeting, I was not writing books!

Using Twitter to promote books

When I did use Twitter it was usually after I had written a blog or had a book release. I would tag people into Tweets. If they were individuals, I would only tag those I followed and who followed me. If it was a big organisation or group, I would tag them if I followed them, but they didn’t necessarily follow me.  

Obviously there would be a link to the blog or sometimes directly to the book. I mean, that’s what it’s for, right?

Wrong.

My first taste of things to come was in the build up to my most recent novel Caught in Traffick. A harrowing book set in Thailand and following the underground activities of a child trafficking gang. I duly sent my Tweets – which is by the way SO time consuming. I’d literally sit at the laptop for hours sending Tweets to all my contacts, which had now grown to over 1000.

I was pleased to see that someone had sent me a direct response. 

I was less enthusiastic when I read it.

This guy berated me in several Tweets (140 characters was clearly not enough in which to abuse me). He accused me of trying to make money out of the misery of children, of exploiting them. He called down shame upon me and asked others to “name and shame” me. I was absolutely mortified. 

My insides turned to jelly as I contemplated the horror of public humiliation. Would I be held up as a bad example; sacrificed and burned on the fires of social media?

As a child protection social worker who has spent years trying to protect children and fighting for their rights, to have someone accuse me of exploiting them was quite honestly, devastating. I then found that the guy had blocked me, thus preventing me from responding to him. However, I did some digging and found his website. Turns out he was a mercenary living in Thailand, charging people a small fortune to search for their lost children. Talk about hypocrisy!

I also discovered that the main players on Twitter were all after business. They were like a pack of hungry sharks, all sending me never ending Tweets asking if I wanted to sign up with them and have them send 4 Tweets a day or whatever it was, for only $9.99 a month.  Hang on, can’t I send my own Tweets for nothing? Hmm, the point being that they had eleventy million contacts who would all see the Tweet about MY book and of course rush to buy it. Nah, doesn’t work. I tried it and was several hundred dollars the poorer.

The straw that broke the camel’s back came last week. I am a member of a closed Facebook Book Group, which shall be nameless as what happened is no fault of this group. Someone in the group suggested that we all exchange Twitter details so we can support each other. Good idea we all said, let’s do it. And so began a frantic afternoon of adding many more people to my contact list. One of these people was a woman, who I shall not name, though I am sorely tempted to do so. She added me and I added her, I mean that was the idea. She is a book blogger, she has a website dedicated to reviewing other people’s books. An ideal contact.

I had written a blog about how I researched my latest book. The blog was therefore about child trafficking in Thailand and made difficult reading, which naturally, not everyone would find to their taste. However, I duly sent out my Tweets to these new contacts, confident that they at least would re-tweet it and raise the profile.

Sigh.

This woman sent me a sharply worded Tweet in response saying “No thank YOU I do NOT wish to read this”. I stared at it in disbelief. What? I mean, what? Once again, I went to message her back to say I had not intended any offence, only to find I had been blocked. This time, I felt angry, really bloody angry. This woman was one of many who had agreed to share Twitter details so we could be of support. Who blocks a fellow author simply because the blog content is not to her taste?

No my book is not chick lit, no, it’s not it’s not happy ever after, but it’s relevant and current and sticking your head in the sand and pretending it’s not there will not make it go away. Fine, if she didn’t want to read it, just don’t read it. I get it. But to send a rude and churlish response and then block me?

Enough was enough.

On 6^th November this year, after just over 12 months of trying, I deactivated my Twitter account.

I cannot begin to describe the feeling of freedom. Something lifted off me as I realised I would never again have to sit there sending hundreds of Tweets, which would only disappear into the ether.

For me, it feels good, feels right, so maybe I owe that woman my thanks?

Maybe

Watch out Facebook, you might be next.

Freya