Twitter. An absolute city on a computer. 

The city of Twitter is made up of the famously verified users living in the upper class (which for a short time you could purchase for $8), the unverified users living in the middle class, the bots pretending to be people living in the lower class, and the racist internet trolls living in the sewers. Unfortunately, Hurricane Elon just rocked the city and all of the sewers are starting to overflow. 

The usage of the N-word has gone up 500% in Twitter posts since Elon Musk took over, some 50% of its workforce has been laid off by Musk (not including the 25 percent who resigned following that and his ultimatum to work extra long hours), and despite him preaching free speech, Twitter suspended comedian Kathy Griffin among others, for parodying Musk. Countless users that are not part of the bot or troll community have begun taking rescue boats out of the sewage flooded city and fleeing to other cities like Instagram or TikTok, or even the abandoned ghost town known as MySpace. But the most underrated city to go to might surprise you. 

Don’t go to another city at all. 

Don’t stay at Twitter either, just shut it down. Twitter’s new era of leadership has provided a new scapegoat for people who secretly don’t want to continue on social media, or want to log off permanently. Now’s your time to book a one-way ticket on the next flight out of this new dictatorship.

Social media is sometimes a blessing and often a curse. Like cities, nobody likes the smell of trash and loud buses but then again, Starbucks and Macy’s are thirty steps away instead of thirty miles. Nobody likes the sexist body-shaming of Twitter trolls but people do like the social justice activists that use Twitter to spread videos and information to help those with no voice. 

For example, when George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin, social media documentation and ongoing viewings resulted in pressure and led to outcries and calls for justice and law enforcement reform. Without that documentation, the public would’ve had to believe the misleading police statement originally issued titled “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction”. 

So from there comes major questions: How do we balance this monster of an entity? How do we eradicate the negatives of social media, (like youth suicide rates skyrocketing thanks to online bullying), but keep the positives? 

The truth is you can’t. 

There’s a whole cocktail of reasons beginning but not limited to, the policy of said sites not screening troll/bot accounts and then no human screening of accounts that break with the Terms of Service. If these are problems you can’t live with, your best bet might be to just cling to a rescue boat and get out.

Now don’t get me wrong, some people rely on social media to promote goods or their work. It’s no secret I believe everyone should leave Twitter, but allow me to cut to the chase. Some users have to have social media and use their following to promote their personal business. Whether that business is promoting the link to your new music on Instagram, baking and designing beautiful wedding cakes on TikTok, or your handmade Etsy products on Facebook, these are the only people who I believe should copy and paste their posts and move from Twitter city to Instagram Village or the Snapchat Republic.

If you’re one of the people that has quit social media and doesn’t have FOMO (fear of missing out) or doesn’t worry about missing out on what Kim Kardashian has to say, let’s look at your main benefit from committing the almighty sinful act of shutting down. According to the National Alliance On Mental Illness, one of the many ways to support your mental health is to “Limit your time on social media platforms. Some platforms, such as Apple and Google, have settings to help you do this automatically on your phone.” 

It’s as simple as this: time off social media means more time for yourself and more time for yourself helps put you in control of what you want your personal mental health portfolio to stand for. It all comes down to where you want to be in this scenario. Are you going to be a nomad and hop from social site to social site or will you leave the rat race all together? 

Regardless of what you do, one thing is for certain, evacuate from Twitter. Those streets aren’t safe anymore (if they ever were).