To my dear "Twitter" friends and followers:
I have found myself increasingly reluctant each day to come to Twitter. I do miss you all, and by "you:"
I mean you real people who want to preserve democracy in the US and around the world.
I mean those of you who want to promote freedom from Fascism and safety from gun violence.
I mean those of you who think the economy should function so all people have access to food, housing, healthcare and education.
I mean those of you who believe society and government should function for all of us, regardless of religious beliefs, race, culture, land of origin, geographic location (coastal or fly-over) or gender identity.
I mean those of you who like to read but don't try to dictate what others can or can't read (other than one's own young children, of course).
I mean those of you who think history should be taught as it happened, not as we would like it to have been.
I mean those of you who think every citizen of the US over the age of 18 should be able to vote without having to jump through hoops and that gerrymandering is immoral.
I don't mean super-wealthy individuals who work to suck every penny out of the world's economy.
I don't mean purveyors of propaganda.
I don't mean bots.
I don't mean trolls.
I don't mean haters.
Long before the 2016 election, I became aware of efforts to encourage open expressions of hate, racism and even violence. After that election I was very distressed by the explosion of these efforts and the response of susceptible people to them. After that fateful election, I began to look for something to do that would help me feel as if I were pushing back. I had been active on Twitter since 2011, and I turned my focus to using my presence on the platform to try to resist those efforts. By 2018, I began to feel as if I needed to do more than just try to influence and educate adults. I wanted to contribute to educating children and promote kindness. That was when I started writing stories in #TheDollsStorybook. Most of the readers of these stories are adults who have an interest in or collect dolls, but some began to ask for a physical book they could read to their children or grandchildren. That's how the books came into being. While I enjoy writing the stories and taking the photos, and don't mind doing the layouts for the books, I really have no interest in promoting the books or managing the royalties. A friend I met while volunteering for President Obama's 2012 campaign suggested that something should be done to encourage support for pediatric cancer treatment and research, so after doing some research, I arranged to have the royalties go to St. Jude. (No income to me means no tax liability.) It's therapeutic to feel as if I'm fighting back in a positive way.
Up until recently I was on Twitter several hours each day, amplifying messages from Demcast and other organizations. I tried to get verified and gave Twitter all the documentation they asked for, showing that I was, indeed, the author of The Doll's Storybook books for children. I felt this activity on Twitter was a good use of my time. Sometime last summer (summer of 2022), the tone of the platform started changing. There was more bickering and nastiness. Bots and trolls became more obvious and harder to avoid. I was finding myself more and more reluctant to come to Twitter to retweet my friends' tweets. As talk of finding an alternative to "the bird site" was circulating, I began to sample the ones I heard about. Nothing grabbed me until Spoutible. I signed up in February 2023 and liked many things about it, although I was without my laptop at the time (another very long story) and had to use my iPad to access the website. It didn't function very well on a tablet at the time, so it was cumbersome, but I could see things getting better over time. There are still some issues with Spoutible, but it works as well now as Twitter did, and at the rate things are improving, it will far surpass it. I'm finding that I have more social interaction on Spoutible than I ever did on Twitter, where my only real social interaction was in the DM rooms. (I never got Twitter's blue checkmark, in spite of providing everything they asked for. When the platform started to sell the blue checkmarks, I no longer wanted one.)
So I'm announcing that I'm moving on. I'm not closing my Twitter account, because:
1) I don't want someone else to take it over and pretend to be me.
2) I want my friends and 33,817 followers to know where I went. (I'm old, but I haven't died, at least not as of April, 2023.)
Are you on Spoutible? If so, look for me there, where I share my stories (new ones and reruns), show off my knitting and other projects, post adorable dog photos and share news articles, especially about politics: Peggy Stuart If not, you should be!
Is there life after Twitter? Yes, and it's called Spoutible!
Sincerely, Peggy Stuart (she, her, hers)
Whale image: I got the photo from someone on Spoutible and found only that it was originally a stock photo without the text. If you know who came up with it in this form, please let me know, and I will add a photo credit.
Peggy Stuart is the author of the story blog for children The Doll's Storybook, and retired award-winning writer of magazine articles at Personnel Journal. She lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband and two miniature poodles. Occasionally she designs clothing and knitwear for dolls and makes them available for free.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
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