Cheri Baker on mourning Twitter:
It seems that we’re losing not just a website, but connections to something deeper.
Are we grieving a sense of community? I ask because Twitter felt like a community, until it didn’t. We Twitter-enthusiasts stuck around for a long time, hoping we’d get those old feelings back. And because we have no real-life community to fall back on, it seems we’re left with two unhappy choices: Look for connection inside the abusive rage-tornado on sites like Twitter, or accept feelings of disconnection and loneliness when we leave.
Cheri really nails it here. I hadn’t been able to express why I’m sad about Twitter, but this is definitely it.
I joined Twitter in March of 2009 when I was seventeen years old. I was in college learning about graphic and web design. There weren’t many people I knew in my daily life that were interested in that stuff, but Twitter is where I was told I could find them. They were right, Twitter is where I found *my people*—other like-minded individuals who were geeks, loved a lot of the things I loved, and where I could talk about my interests without feeling like I was boring people to death.
And now… my people are gone.
