The Emotional Labor of Leaving Twitter

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Elon Musk's chaotic takeover of the Twitter platform (which will always be Twitter for me; never X) is uncovering an emotional storm of reactions and responses that are deeply instructive to anyone interested in how humans create selves and make decisions.

While many users did shut down their Twitter accounts decisively after Musk's purchase, others have only done so after a great deal of struggle.

And some of us are struggling still. As one of those struggling people with a deep interest in emotions and empathy, I've been watching the emotional currents running through the Twitterverse. Or to be more precise, I've focused on the emotional currents in people who want to leave Twitter, but cannot (yet).

Your Social Media Self Is a Real Self

First, telling people to just leave Twitter and stop complaining, while understandable, does not make room for the creation-of-self that occurs in social media spaces.

Each platform enforces a different way of communicating, such as TikTok's video-focused platform, Instagram's curated-but-pretending-to-be-candid images, or Twitter's requirement that we distill our thoughts into 140 (and later 280) characters. We learn how to display different aspects of ourselves on different platforms.

The decision to discard a self that was honed over time, and is connected to many other selves in an international community, is not easy for many of us, and even the idea of doing so brings up many complex emotions.

The Crucial Importance of Emotions

In my work, I focus on the cognitive purpose of emotions so that people can learn how to work with emotions (instead of working against them with repression, or for them with incompetent expression). Each emotion, I've found, has a different purpose, and each emotion helps us access a different form of cognitive awareness.

As I observe the Twitter meltdown from within (I've been on Twitter since 2009), these five following emotions are capturing my attention.

The Purpose of Anger and Rage

Anger and rage are very on-brand for many Twitter users, who often gather to communally feel and direct anger and rage at any number of targets. For many months, however, much of this anger and rage has been directed at Twitter itself.

Anger tells us that our values and boundaries have been challenged, and the work of anger is to connect to our values and rebuild our sense of self and our boundaries.

Rage, however, is anger that has ramped up to the next level. Rage appears when our boundaries and sense of self are not just being challenged, but are in actual danger. Because our social media selves are real selves, the continual disruptions that are being thrown at Twitter users could be endangering those selves.

Anger is a necessary everyday emotion because we always need to remain connected to our values and be aware of our boundaries, but rage is a signal that something is very wrong. Generally, if we're in a situation that continually brings rage forward, it's likely time to bring in an arbitrator (or make our exit from this unhealthy situation).

The Role of Grief

In many U.S. cultures, grief does not receive a lot of notice or care; many of us tend to be grief-impaired. Even so, grief is everywhere on Twitter.

Grief is a powerful emotion that supports us when we've lost something or someone very important. Most crucially, grief arises when we have no choice about a death or loss. The work of grief is to mourn and honor what we've lost, and in most cultures, grief is best handled in community grief rituals, funerals, and wakes.

In the eyes of many, Musk meant the death of Twitter, and he made no bones about wanting to upend and rebrand it. The grief I'm seeing in the Twitterverse is a sort of disenfranchised grief (or an avoidance of grief). For those of us who have remained unrealistically hopeful as we watch the destruction of our platform, there's a kind of refusal to say that the Twitter we knew is dead. (You can see it in my refusal to use Musk's new name.)

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Perhaps we are raging against the dying of the light, but I wonder what a communal grief ritual for Twitter users would look like. I wonder if it would help us mourn the death of something that was so important to all of us.

Sadness and Despair

Unlike grief, which arises when we have no choice about losing something forever, sadness helps us let go of things that aren't working anyway. I see a lot of sadness in Twitter users, but also despair, which is a deeper form of sadness that can lead to inertia.

Sadness supports us in letting go when we have a choice; we can let go of clutter, or outworn ideas, or unworkable relationships, or things we've outgrown. When we can let go of unneeded things, we often feel a sigh of relief, and the ability to find better things that do work. Perhaps the people who left Twitter early work well with sadness, and had better places to go?

Despair, on the other hand, is a trapped form of sadness. I've noticed that people who haven't learned to let go with sadness, and haven't experienced the relief and freedom of letting go, may think that letting go is dangerous or unmanageable. They may hold onto things just because they have them, and for no other reason.

I am certainly feeling grief over Twitter. I would never sign up for what it has become, and I would not be a part of X. I know that. But there's still a despairing feeling I have, that if I let go, there will just be a bird-shaped hole in my life, and nothing else.

It's a process.

Listening to the Wisdom of Your Emotions

Of course, many other emotions are involved in something as complex as losing a self and a community that you've built over many months or years. These five emotions, however, may help you identify the undercurrents so that you can make the decisions you need to make for your social health, your social media self-actualization, and your emotional well-being.