There is life after Twitter

Elon Musk just forced through the new blocking changes on Twitter (also known as X, but I refuse to call it that) where blocking someone means they can still see your posts. That and the news that in November all data will be used to train his shitty AI, Grok, without an opt-out, has caused another exodus from Twitter.

As a result my Bluesky account has gone from 2.5k followers to 3k. On the fediverse my Mastodon account just hit 9,900 followers, and I’m hoping I’ll get to that coveted 10k before the end of the year. I’m not writing this to humble brag about my internet clout though, there is a point: there is life after Twitter.

Scraping my way to 10,000 followers on Twitter took forever. I don’t really know exactly how long, but I think it took me basically a decade. Not long after my Twitter account sat at 13k and was growing steadily, until Elon Musk took over.

My partner and I had just moved out of our home we built together in Missouri because we felt things were getting too dangerous. Not long after moving, the school district my partner had once trained to be a teacher at started banning books. It was the right move, but it was a very hard time. Between leaving the home I’d built for myself in the US (I’m Dutch) and moving to a new country that I’d never been to before (Cyprus,) and the fact that measures for covid were being scaled down even though the pandemic was and is clearly ongoing, I was going through a little bit of a nervous breakdown when Elon Musk walked his sink into Twitter HQ.

I knew then what I know now: Twitter, long term, is not going to make it. As someone who’s reliant on income from creative pursuits which had never gotten much attention from press (the one time a project did it was a free game) I did not take it well. Everything I had was rolled up in Twitter and if that was taken away I’d surely be doomed, I felt. Two years later, I’m not sure I was entirely wrong in that assessment.

What followed was a mad scramble to be first on every platform I could be first on. I made an account on Cohost (RIP) and pushed it heavily. I grudgingly made an account on Mastodon because things had been made easy for me with an invitation to peoplemaking.games. I even tried Hive Social, although I was absolutely rooting for it to collapse like it did.

It turned out that even though I’d previously felt like the vibes on fedi were pretty rancid, I actually felt quite at home there, with lots of queer and extremely nerdy people who often had an answer to even my most niche tech questions. Cohost I used mostly for long-form content. Not long after I managed to get to around 3,000 followers by riding the wave of new (and short-lived) arrivals from Twitter to fedi and felt at least a little safer.

Though I was sad to see many of my fellow game developers and other contacts no longer posting on Mastodon after 1-3 months, the new fledgling community I found there was welcoming and supportive. Then the real work started, in early 2023. Riding the wave was over, and most of my professional network had simply resumed posting on Twitter like nothing was wrong. It took ages to scramble my way to 1,000 followers on Bluesky, and most of the accounts that followed me were primarily idle backups for people who were still mainly using Twitter.

Slowly, over the two years after November 2022, my reach grew. I eventually got to 5k on fedi and could allow myself to dream of, once again, reaching 10k like I had on Twitter, something I’d worked so hard for. I was helped out tremendously with support from both fedi and Cohost earlier this year, during one of the toughest times in my life. They helped me with donations, so that my studio could reach the release of Kitsune Tails without bouncing rent checks, for which I’m eternally grateful.

I don’t have numbers for Cohost (since it never showed any) but on fedi the support for our game at launch was overwhelming. 1,600 boosts and enough people buying and reviewing our game in the 1st week that it got over 500 reviews and hit overwhelmingly (99%) positive on Steam. The game is a success now, and just recently won silver at the Queer Games Festival in Melbourne.

Now I enjoy great support on fedi (every fedi follower is worth at least a couple Twitter followers in terms of engagement) but I also have my backup Bluesky account. That means I won’t have all my eggs in one basket anymore, ensuring no rich billionaire can take said basket and use it as a bedpan like Musk did.

My mental health is also much improved. Turns out that spending large amounts of time on a place called “the hell site” even before Musk took over wasn’t great for me. Meanwhile, fedi doesn’t have nearly the same effect on my mental health because moderation there tends to be so much better.

All that to say: I’m safe now. And yes, it took a couple years of work. Living your values is hard. Point is: you can do it too. You don’t need to take Elon Musk’s shit. I believe in you.

There is life after Twitter.