Why I left. Why I'm coming back.

In January, I stopped being part of the writing community on Threads, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook. 

After leaving Twitter in 2023, I had purposely shaped these other spaces for the circles I love, following writers, illustrators and other clever creatives. I worked to make connections, boost posts and lift up good voices. In the end, I couldn’t keep a promise to myself to be a good citizen. 

That’s half true. I did try.

But these social media neighborhoods made it hard to build community.

By luck or design, Twitter had been great for connections. The invention of the hashtag effortlessly sorted the rushing river of my feed into manageable tributaries. I could find friends at a design events, and I was part of the real-time conversations at writing conferences. The bleary-eyed #5AMWritersClub worked as expected because our feed was chronological; every 5 AM, we'd meet up and cheer early writers on.

When the jackboots arrived on Twitter and the writers decamped, the social media alternatives felt like the fake cities of China. They looked impressive but felt hollow.

We couldn’t find each other. The rare interactions with my circle didn’t translate to seeing those people more often. Even after the effort of follows and follow-backs, gone was the banter, the memes, and, mostly, the friendships.

Meta's Instagram, Threads and Facebook keep asking what rides I’d like as they build their amusement parks to be at least as exciting as TikTok’s.

And, while I like the counter-culture gait of Bluesky (and even the prehistoric amble of Mastodon), I don't see their posts embedded within news articles. That honor still goes to X. But that also means the conversations on Bluesky feel like distant lightning without the rumble of thunder. It doesn’t mean Bluesky isn't a place for news (or our angst about it), but it doesn't have the energy of standing in the storm like Twitter did.

Maybe you’re doing it wrong, Jonathan. You just need more followers.

Maybe.

Maybe my 1,200 followers on Threads isn't enough. And for these ever-hungry feeds, maybe tens of thousands of real people aren’t “enough.”

And maybe I’m tired of that. (Maybe, in this age of loneliness, we start to make platforms where having a few good friends is pretty great.)

I know. I wish for magical things.

I’m asking software developers to look beyond the technical similarities of posts and likes and, instead, pay attention to the things that make us feel like we belong. Sorry—it’s what I want because I grew up there, in a place called Twitter.

All this preamble to say I’m trying something new.

I’ve been in the business of creativity for decades. I currently run a naming company called 3.2.1 and write children’s fiction as Jonathan Bing. I like the real world of real words, where we know what we’re reading isn’t ruminant from AI mastication. (It’s truly cruel irony that AI didn’t steal the most mundane jobs first, but the most creative.)

But all of us creative souls don’t become less creative when machines replace us. We’re still here and, in our own ways, we’re still brilliant, dangerous, funny, insightful, eye opening and world changing.

Which is why this particular moment feels like our cue. Creativity, by its very nature, is allergic to things that aren’t working (currently: politics) and heat-seeking toward things finding things that challenge the status quo (like resistance).  

That's also why I want to add kindling to the conversation about creativity.

I'm drawn to write and talk about doing things differently on a scared planet spinning within the vast vacuum of space that AI just created.

To do this, I’m landing back in my social spaces with a changed perspective. I’m no longer viewing these social networks as they probably want to be seen: as destinations. Instead, they can be that starbase from where we head to other cool planets.

To be honest, I’m nervous about going from 140 characters (for those who remember) to longer forms like this post. It’s a heavier lift. It’s also exposing.

But I want to try, in new ways and on my own terms. I’m tired of feeling I’m more useful to social media than social media is useful to me. At least let’s understand that this digital relationship is symbiotic.

I want to try, so we can keep incubating creativity even as AI is working to smother it.

I want to try, so our weird algorithm-bent feeds aren't molding us into their version of who we are.

My hope is adventure—in all the fun and treacherous meanings of the word. I want to learn things about myself. I want to meet others on the journey.

That's why I'm back. Hopefully, in the process, I can help leave this place a little better.