Leaving Twitter

I suppose it was inevitable. I left Facebook over four years ago, and over the last year (and probably longer) I've had the almost daily urge to quit Twitter. Now the time has come.

Let me begin with an image. Twitter, to me, seems like one of the palantiri, the "seeing stones," in The Lord of the Rings. Used wisely, a palantir seems like a helpful tool, a means of fast communication showing what's happening in the far reaches of the world. But in The Lord of the Rings, the question raised is whether they can be used wisely at all. The images shown are from the far reaches, but they are carefully curated by the dark lord Sauron to cause despair. These images are assumed to be truthful, but even if they are accurate, the narrative they tell is not.