curating your twitter feed isn't enough
i started withdrawing from 'public' twitter in the late 2010s, and was removed from most regular internet drama as a result. i had my little private account for friends, where i'd post about cute teddy bears and my favorite anime characters while happily blocking any users who posted content that pissed me off. despite that, the twitter feed was still harmful for my mental health and i am now glad to be free from it entirely.
blocking is a reactive measure
i learned years ago there was little reason to get worked up over upsetting content, so i'd just block and move on.
however, you can't do that without seeing the upsetting content to begin with—unless you use a blocklist, which puts the onus of curation entirely up to the creator of the list. that invites a whole host of issues like people being added for petty reasons, people added for content they posted in the past but not anymore, general lack of maintenance, the hostility that comes with such a list being created to begin with. of course, no one wants to make themselves a potential target of derision or harassment so a self-opt-in-style blocklist would never work either.
so yes, i could just block all the annoying shippers and drama starters that appear on the 'for you' page, but i'd constantly be playing whack-a-mole while exposing myself to topics i dislike. what's the point in that?
muting is useless
in the latter years i didn't even use the 'for you' page and had retweets turned off so that i would only see my friends' posts. but sometimes the content that upset me came from my friends! this would range from relatively harmless stuff to annoying discourse to actually triggering imagery.
of course, i had a long stack of terms muted, but things got through so easily because no one added content warnings to their posts and i get annoyed by random crap that i don't think needs to be warned for either.
yaoi discourse pisses me off! biblically angel jokes piss me off! particular character interpretations piss me off! it's very easy to accidentally run into these things on twitter with no mention of them in the caption—nothing i can mute, just a screenshot of some tumblr post or hint at a gag.
these are inconsequential examples, but you're basically playing a slot machine where any pull can potentially annoy you, or worse, genuinely trigger you. i don't have a problem with guro artwork, but that sort of content could easily ruin the day of others yet no one tags shit on twitter.
you have to be active 24/7
it's useless to go on twitter once per day, let alone once every few days. if you actually want to get anything out of it community-wise, connect with others, even get the algorithm to boost your art, you need to check the timeline 24/7.
that means that the slot machine doesn't just take up an hour at the end of the day, but 5 minutes every hour, each where you can potentially become pissed off—and when you are that 5 minutes can quickly turn to 10 to 20 to an hour or more.
"can't you just cope with the small stuff?" i guess, but isn't it stupid to expose yourself to this many annoyances in a place supposed to provide entertainment? in the past, we chose to spend our spare time on things that we actively cared about and enjoyed.
even if there were annoyances in that hobby, they didn't have the unpredictability of twitter. you could expect what you'd run into—spilling ink on your drawing, kicking a ball out of bounds. twitter timeline, you can enjoy talking to friends one second and seeing something that spirals you into anxiety the next.
what you see is what you get
until threads and bluesky, twitter was the only social media where what you saw was what you got—that is to say that every tweet is 280 characters max, so people post without 'headings' or 'introductions' for the most part. there's nothing separating you and the content that might agitate you.
i do follow a RSS feed via feedly; just some local news sites and personal blogs. the difference between this and twitter is that i know much more what i'm going into, e.g., if i click into an article about wastewater management, i know i won't be randomly accosted with discourse about irish-americans.
even if i do run into something i dislike, i'll typically be less annoyed because of the presence of surrounding context, i.e. the rest of the article. it's not the same as a one-off post that leaves you dissatisfied and going back to the slot machine.
the same goes for the friends who, 99% of the time, share content you love but 1% engage in dumb discourse that fries your brains. if you were to receive that same information of what they share in-person or in an online conversation, you'd have continuous context around it that makes it less annoying. in one-on-one conversations, people will also be more aware of your specific annoyances and triggers that they can't cater to (and shouldn't have to) on their own page.
of course reading long-form and engaging in actual conversation takes up more time, but it also doesn't ask me for my time throughout the day—a much healthier approach overall.
what's the solution?
first, get off twitter. go talk to your friends whether online or in real life.
get into media that's actually interesting and hasn't be languishing for the past decade. draw something other than fanart while you're at it!
find some hobbies that don't rely on the internet or even computers.
still need somewhere to vent or share your thoughts to no one in particular? honestly, i think a private instagram account is fine for this. and i'm always an advocate for starting a blog; just don't force yourself to write every day or change your writing style. a monthly update is a good way to save up your memories over a few weeks and share what matters most to you later.
that's the advice i'd give myself.