reflections on twitter + thanksgiving recipes

The best time on Twitter was 2009-2012

Photo by Ella Olsson on Unsplash

Last Thursday night, after hundreds of twitter employees resigned en masse after an ultimatum from new CEO Elon Musk, there was something of a collective outpouring of grief on Twitter as people anticipated that the end of the platform was near, since there were no longer enough staff to keep it up and running.

Many people mourned the role Twitter had played in their lives for so many years in helping them find community and connections. There are other social media platforms, of course, but there’s none quite like Twitter.

I thought about whether I should be mourning Twitter, but I wasn’t really feeling it, even though Twitter certainly has played an important role in my life over the past decade and a half. I joined the platform in 2008, when I was a senior in college. As I graduated, entered the professional world, and moved to Washington DC to start a new job, Twitter played an invaluable role in my budding professional career as a journalist. I used it to network and make professional connections, to find conferences to attend and industry groups to join. I connected with other writers and editors to whom I pitched freelance stories. I made connections that led to interviews at companies I wanted to work for, and in some cases, eventually led to jobs. Through Twitter, I found so many opportunities that helped me grow my career, especially in those early days of the platform when it felt simpler and more fun.

A turning point in Twitter’s history, I think, is when they introduced the retweet button, and later, the quote tweet function. Suddenly, it was much easier for tweets to go wildly viral; all it took was one retweet or quote tweet from a big account, and then hundreds or thousands of retweets would follow, screenshots posted on Instagram. If you had a good joke or one-liner, you could go viral and rack up hundreds or thousands of new followers. But also, one joke quote-tweeted to a new audience of people who didn’t know you, or didn’t understand the context of the joke, could lead to getting harassed and having people angrily hurling insults at you for days. It could lead to losing your job or getting death threats and hate mail.

In the last two or three years, I realized that the very platform that had once been so important to building my career was now a professional liability. After watching what happened when Verge writer Sarah Jeong was hired at the New York Times, I deleted my entire history of tweets — ten years’ worth — and started fresh, and I also kept up the practice of deleting my tweets every few months. As I took on more leadership roles in my career, I realized that making jokes on Twitter had become too risky — they could easily be misunderstood and taken out of context, and the risk just wasn’t worth it. Your followers might understand that your remark was sarcastic, but once it was quote-tweeted by someone with a huge following of people who didn’t know you, the fun was over.

The tech writer Charlie Warzel wrote in his newsletter recently:

One thing I’ve noticed a lot is that a lot of my favorite power users have become power lurkers. They haven’t given up the platform, but they realize that posting is mostly a losing game full of professional liabilities, endless and futile fights, and diminishing returns. And that’s grim because, for those who do post, we’re much more likely to encounter the loudest, angriest, most politically charged voices in response, which in turn makes the place less fun to be around!

And the writer Jenee Desmond Harris (also known as the current Dear Prudence) tweeted about lurkers as well:

Jenée @jdesmondharris

In my experience people who make hiring decisions in media are the ULTIMATE Twitter lurkers (Hi, friends!) They will not type a single character but will tell you everything you said over the past year while asking you if you want to apply for a job

Both Charlie and Jenee’s observations about Twitter in 2022 ring true, in my experience. In early 2022, I drastically scaled back my usage of Twitter and basically stopped tweeting altogether. I now tweet occasionally to promote stories from my colleagues at Vox, and that’s about it. I might read some tweets and see what other people are up to, but I find that posting anything on Twitter has diminishing returns. The risk was almost never worth the reward anymore. I had become a lurker.

Twitter, the platform that once helped me build my career and my professional network, had now become a professional liability. So when people were mourning Twitter on Thursday night, I realized that I had already quietly quit Twitter long ago. I didn’t have mcuh of anything to mourn anymore. If anything, I’d like to mourn the Twitter of 2008-2012. That was the best time on Twitter. It’s all been downhill since then for that platform, but at least we had a few good years. In the meantime, I’ll see you on Instagram.

Good things to read

Home is where your best friend is, Harper’s Bazaar.

Daycare is broken, The Cut.

Why is America always divided 50-50? The Atlantic.

Is falling asleep to TV really so bad? Vulture.

The age of social media is over, The Atlantic.

The unbearable lightness of Buzzfeed, The Verge.

‘Is everyone doing this perfectly but me?’ The Guardian. An excerpt from Michelle Obama’s new book!

How did we get so obsessed with streaks? Culture Study.

Why is it so hard to find a doctor who will remove your IUD? Gawker.

‘Fast furniture’ is cheap, and Americans are throwing it in the trash, New York Times.

Instagram makes parents feel more clueless than we really are, Catapult.

Thanksgiving recipe roundup

It wouldn’t be a pre-Thanksgiving newsletter from me without a roundup of Thanksgiving recipe ideas! I love Thanksgiving sides, so here are a whole bunch of recipes I’ve had bookmarked this year that sound amazing….

Roasted brussels sprouts with gochujang and brown butter. Roasted squash with spiced onion gravy. Shingled sweet potatoes with harissa. Caramelized onion and squash tart. Winter squash agrodolce. Spicy caramelized squash with lemon and hazelnuts. Caramelized winter squash with toasted coconut gremolata. French onion stuffing. Harissa-roasted sweet potatoes and red onion. Roasted brussels sprouts with cinnamon-butter yogurt and chestnuts. Cheesy hasselback potato gratin. Sweet and sour butternut squash. Mushroom and gruyere bread pudding. Roasted brussels sprouts with maple soy caramel. Roasted brussels sprouts with miso and honey. Brussels sprouts with pickled shallots and labneh. Citrus-glazed sweet potatoes. Brown buttered squash with dates and walnuts.

And here’s what I’m planning to make for my own Thanksgiving this year: hasselback butternut squash with sage butter and honey and harissa roasted brussels sprouts with lemon relish!

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