My New Year's resolution is to tweet better and much less often. I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the site—both its direction as a real-world entity and my personal experience living in its esoteric, digital verse.
It's difficult to think of a bigger "First World problem" than a Twitter addiction and, thus, to justify how much handwringing surrounds its devolution into an Elon Musk-controlled hellscape. My colleague, John Saltas—founder of this fine newspaper—has written in this very space about his decision to exit, and stalwarts like Salt Lake Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley have, at minimum, suspended their activity. (Ironically, Bagley did so days before City Weekly readers chose him as the state's best social media follow. He's still on Facebook.)
But silly as it all truly is, there's no understating the tectonic impact of Twitter on American media, nor the role it played in my professional life and the lives of many—if not most—of my journalism peers. As corporate consolidation and dried-up advertising dealt legacy newsrooms a slow death, social media and particularly Twitter gave my generation the means to seize their destinies, establish "brands" separate from their employers and gather information at lightning speeds.
All of that is why, like any doomed addict, I'm scared I can't live without it.
My Twitter story begins at Utah State University, where wise journalism professors rightly pegged it as the next big thing and urged (read: required) my cohort to create accounts. This was the tail end of the MySpace era—when you still needed an .edu email to access Facebook—and my initial engagement was casual, at best.
Then Osama bin Laden was killed. Being a broke college kid with no cable TV, I sat glued to my laptop for hours, watching the whole world have one giant conversation.
A couple years later, I'm a cub reporter at the Deseret News when the state is jolted by Judge Robert J. Shelby's ruling in favor of marriage equality. And thanks to one of the greatest legal blunders in state history, no stay was initially requested, so no stay was given, launching a mad dash for same-sex wedding licenses before appeals could hit the brakes.
It was my day off but being a young newshound, I headed straight for the Salt Lake County Clerk's Office. There, I tweeted photos of the many Equality bumper stickers in the parking lot and of two Pride-flag-neckerchiefed Boy Scouts delivering pizza to the would-be spouses waiting in line.
The latter found its way onto CNN and blew up my phone for literal days—my first taste of virality. It also earned me a stern warning from my DNews editor to tighten things up online. I went in a different direction.
A couple years later, I'm a Tribune government reporter, the actual dream job of my naive youth. A lawmaker with whom I share a more-than-somewhat adversarial relationship steps in it hard with an ill-conceived tweet. I call him out, opening a floodgate of criticism for him and a near-overdose of schadenfreude for me. The lawmaker then phones me, off the record, and asks for my advice (to delete, or not to delete, that is the question).
A non-elected political official tells my wife that "they" maintain a "file" of my tweets. "Nice account Ben's got," he says, in essence, "be a shame if something happened to it." I experience the requisite panic attack, but then I go in a different direction, tweeting with more candor than ever.
I figured if "they" were going to religiously scrutinize my feed, I'd drown them in the data and perspectives they should consider but reflexively don't.
I have zero doubt that Twitter got me off the stacks of resumes (of which there are many) and through employers' doors (of which there are vanishingly few). It's how I've done some of my best work, creating a record of obscure events and pre-writing articles with live feedback from my readers.
Twitter is also where I've acted out my worst impulses. When it hasn't been my day, my week, my month or even my year, the app is probably the third most self-destructive thing I could reach for—Top 5 for sure. Add in the recent ... let's say noise, and it feels like self-intervention is warranted.
I don't plan to go cold turkey. In true millennial fashion, I plan to "quiet quit" my Twitter account, which is really just an angry boomer way of saying "setting healthy and appropriate work-life boundaries."
Retweeting is my favorite use of Twitter: elevating expert commentary; newsworthy statements from public figures; quality reporting by my state and national peers; and sure, the occasional zinger. When I tweet, I aim to limit myself to promoting City Weekly content and events as well as just-the-facts updates to the SLC Traffic Violence map I maintain online.
I'm sure I'll slip, probably with a snarky poll here and there. But writing this will help keep me accountable to myself and to my readers. In particular, I have to stop directly antagonizing the Utah Department of Transportation, because I've decided to focus on transportation during the upcoming legislative session. I've never picked my own beat before.
Generational questions are being asked, and Utah is poised to double-down on the demonstrable mistakes of the 20th century. I could fill a whole column on this topic but to end in brief: Our leadership is asleep at the wheel (pun very much intended) and most Utah media is riding alongside them. Seems there's plenty of reporters for the WalletHub rankings that clog my inbox—not so many willing to parse the systemic nuances of an upcoming Interstate 15 expansion that will displace west siders and, in all sincere likelihood, worsen congestion downtown.
For all its faults, Twitter taught me to chase my passions. That means being open to a different direction, even one away from Twitter. As 2023 begins, maybe there are new directions our city, our state—even you, dear reader—might consider.
Happy New Year!
City Weekly news editor Benjamin Wood is filling in for Private Eye this week. Send comments to bwood@cityweekly.net.
