I don’t remember exactly when I opened my Twitter account. I think it was in the late winter or early spring of 2017. It was definitely after I had begun this column, but not too long after. I don’t remember exactly why I decided to sign up for Twitter at that point. I’d never used it before. Twitter had been my dad’s special interest for awhile back in 2011, when it was new.

You see, my mom is part of a blog with a group of other mystery writers called Jungle Red Writers and Dad considered himself their personal publicist. So he taught himself how to use Twitter, the basics of search engine optimization and the best ways to get followers, and he built that account from zero to 10,000 followers. Only some of those were what my dad called “porn bot,” and he always blocked and reported them. That was pretty good for 2011!

I liked Twitter because it was a text-based social media platform, and in case it’s not obvious, I’m a text-based person. I prefer reading things to images and videos, which is why I haven’t been as devoted to Instagram as some millennials (I still have an account, though, and I even know how to make reels).

I’m not particularly photogenic, but by George, I can write good enough. Twitter was also a good place for me to practice condensing my writing. For a long time, a tweet was limited to 280 characters, and before that, it was 140! I’ve always been told it’s more difficult to write fewer words than more words, and I genuinely think tweeting helped me develop that skill.

Twitter really expanded my horizons. I followed a lot of different people, from all sorts of places and walks of life, and I learned a lot that I
wouldn’t have learned otherwise. I also found the local Maine community on Twitter, which was, of course, the best part.

I made some real friends on Twitter, and even found a few dates. I tweeted about Spindrift seltzer so much that they started sending me free stuff as part of their “Spinfluencer” program. (If you’ve ever spotted me out in public walking my dogs, chances are I’m in a Spindrift hat.)

I myself amassed a perfectly respectable 5,000 followers (only some of whom were porn bots). But the absolute bright, shining moment of my Twitter experience came in June 2020, during the great bee invasion. Back in the summer of June 2020, an entire beehive swarmed into the closet of my brother’s old bedroom. It was honestly fascinating to see — an entire cloud of thousands upon thousands of honeybees working as a singular mind — but also kind of terrifying. And confusing.

There’s no 911 to call when bees get into your home. We left some messages at places, but as this was spring 2020, everything was still pretty
locked down and scattered. So I started tweeting, because what else would I do in that situation? Lo and behold it turns out that Phil, who owns The Honey Exchange in Portland and is at the center of the social hive that is the southern Maine bee world, followed me on
Twitter. He sent me a message and within two hours of my initial post, a mobile beekeeper showed up at my door, humanely vacuumed up the whole hive for relocation, and left us a couple jars of organic homemade honey to boot.

Don’t get me wrong, Twitter wasn’t perfect. There was some spam, and I had quite a few persistent trolls from time to time who would literally reply to every single one of my posts with an insult. At least they were local Maine haters. But when billionaire Elon Musk bought
the site, it went from a regular social media platform to something much worse.

The functions of the site degraded — more errors, more downtime — as he fired a huge chunk of Twitter employees. He allowed Neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists and violent misogynists back onto the platform. He didn’t seem to think the moderating department was necessary, so
harassment and spam on the website has multiplied.

Remember the porn bots? They’re everywhere now. And there’s a lot more vitriol and insults. Musk’s management has turned it into an angry, stewing right-wing playground. I logged in just now and the first notification I received was someone commenting, “Leftist filth destroys states and communities.” It was a reply to a picture I had retweeted of Maine Gov. Janet Mills dressed as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

I clung to my Twitter for a while. I loved it. The scrolling was a little addictive. I figured I had been on Twitter before Elon Musk bought it, so why should I have to leave, since I was here first? But, alas, Twitter, or X, as Musk keeps calling it, continues to deteriorate as its
master Musk continues to deteriorate. He seems intent on turning Twitter into a propaganda machine.

At first, I figured it was a conservative propaganda machine but now I’m thinking it’s just a bullhorn for Musk, whose own beliefs are less “conservative” and more “whatever makes me richer.” He is using the power and influence gained in part from his sole ownership of Twitter (excuse me, X) to worm his way into the federal government. The president-elect appointed him to “cut” government spending, because who
better to know how to make the American government serve its people than a South African billionaire born with an emerald spoon in his mouth? (Musk’s family wealth comes from an emerald mine, not his genius or labor.)

Musk used his money, power and influence to make the GOP strip several provisions from its recent government spending bill, including a ban on junk feed from ticketing and hotel websites and criminalizing the publication of non-consensual, intimate images, aka revenge porn, as well as sexual images and videos generated by artificial intelligence, called deepfakes.

Finally, Musk is grossly transphobic. He has been disowned by his daughter because she is transgender and he has been devoting a great deal of time and energy to making life for transgender people as difficult as possible. I will not stand for that. My wife is transgender. I love her and her community more than I love scrolling on Twitter (and I have loved it a lot.)

So I’m bidding bye-bye to the birdie. I have locked my account and will only login as much as necessary to prevent it from being deactivated and the username taken by someone else. I’m sure I’ll find a replacement social media habit. But until I do, let’s hope there are no bees.