Last night I took the decision to close my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. I’m also actively considering closing my main substack, The New Era. Because, in the new era, our privacy should be more important than spouting our points of view in the various social media cess pits.
On Twitter, it seemed, most of my 30,000 ‘followers’ were bots, agents provocateurs or just simply, weird. Without doubt I had a few loyal friends - several of whom I met in the real world and with whom I am in regular contact. But Twitter/X has become like the circular AI economy. It feeds upon itself and hooks us in to a vortex of confusion. Nobody can really be trusted. Anonymous accounts dominate. And Musk sycophants create the overton window out of which we peer, bleary-eyed.
But it’s the abiding environment of lack of trust that made me leave. A trustless network is utterly destructive. If we can’t be sure what role people are playing we descend to a common denominator where darkness and paranoia dominate. And I was getting the feeling that I was as as paranoid and destructive as everyone else.
So I want to refocus on the real world again. And I need to refocus uninterrupted. Of course I want to write. But I don’t want to argue constantly or point fingers at corrupt politicians for the rest of my life. So the real world beckons. And I’d like to start having conversations with my wife and family again, based on things other than what’s currently doing the rounds on the X-defined news cycle.
So follow me here if you like. Meanwhile I’ll be heading to the sun for a few weeks. Cheerio for now.