An Ode to Twitter
You may have noticed I deactivated my social media. It’s fine if you didn’t, really. It was a week, a blip on the radar compared to others who have done the same. Unfortunately, I’m too social. I broke the scrolling habit pretty quickly, and it didn’t even require me locking my laptop in the closet or anything. The problem lies in the lack of connections—I’m not built for the monastery. I still need to talk to people, stay in touch with the community I curated for myself. That’s why I have my Discord server, really. It’s not because I want to paywall access to Julia, it’s because I consider myself and my followers a loose community. Even if I don’t follow you, I still like seeing your replies and interacting with you!
The problem lies in the people who don’t follow me, the guys with 20 to 200 followers who just toss out slurs and hate and scroll by. The larger my following, the more I encounter this—in a way, I miss my drive account era, where the worst comments I got were about films I had no interest in uploading. (Hi, Harry Potter!) Most of those people who only wanted links have cycled through and been replaced by others, and though I don’t mind the occasional viral tweet, anything with more than 10 likes always seems to come with a whole lot of bullshit. Again—it comes with the territory of a large(ish) following, and I’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring. It helps that I have notifications off for accounts that don’t follow me and are newly created—that cuts down on a lot of bullshit. It does ruin the fun, though. Don’t let the attitude fool you, I’m not here to make enemies. I genuinely do want to talk and make friends and have civil conversations! It’s just that Twitter is unbelievably bad for having said conversations, especially when your mental and physical health is volatile.
I feel comfortable enough saying that I have chronic illnesses of various kinds and seriousness, along with a complicated childhood and adolescence. My antidepressants save me from the worst of my depression and anxiety, but I still struggle—as do most of us. Life is not easy. It’s incredibly complicated and stressful, especially when your body and mind can’t function on a daily, consistent basis. The Twitter algorithm doesn’t know this, of course. It doesn’t go “oh she feels like shit, time to pump up her tweets”. It feels like that, sometimes, especially as more bots flood the site. In a way, I’m grateful for my brief ban, even with the reversal, because it let me find most of my mutuals on my backup without the setup of trying to convince people I actually am Julia Startofsummer.
I cannot state it enough that I’m incredibly grateful for the following I have, on multiple platforms at this point. Less than a year ago I knew every follower of mine by name on Twitter and Letterboxd: I can’t do that now. It’s dizzying at times, and I can’t imagine what it’s like for people with meteoric rises. Unfortunately, I’m just not built for it sometimes. Maybe this changes with the new doctor I’m seeing on Thursday, or maybe it doesn’t.
I’m going to keep this main account up no matter if I log out or lock the app or deactivate my backup. I try not to care about the metrics of my Patreon and Substack but being unable to share has really killed the views of my new posts. I enjoy posting 4 stills of the films I watch, that will likely continue (though not for everything) on main, along with sharing my writing. 1800 followers is still an enormous amount, but it’s a whole lot less than 5800–my hope is that I’ll have less angry people finding what I say. If it doesn’t, maybe I do just share my writing and otherwise move off social media! I feel like I’m very openly a work in progress, sometimes to my detriment, but at least I’m not making promises I can’t keep up with.
Speaking of that, my discord server will be hosting more watch parties—it’s something I like to do, even if actually streaming the film annoys me at times. I want you guys to be involved in the research I do for the pieces I write, as corny as that sounds—film is not a solo interest to me. It’s collaborative, it’s community driven. I find I’m more interested in watching something because of a discussion I have with someone than because I saw a random tweet—the watch parties are a natural extension of that to me. I know I’m doing one to celebrate baseball coming back: A Moneyball and Eephus double feature on the 25th. I think it’ll be fun! And that’s the point.
This whole writing thing is not a self-serious stuffy statement. I’m still wrapping my head around the pure numbers I have: 80ish people over two platforms (Patreon and Substack) doesn’t sound like a lot, but to me it’s enormous. When I started this in September I thought I’d get maybe 10, 15 people and most would be my friends. Something low pressure so I could figure out my style, what I wanted to write about, how I wanted to do it, if I even wanted to write! Instead almost a hundred of you decided you wanted MORE of me. Frankly, it’s terrifying. I feel this intense shame, as if I’m showing up in a sundress to the Met Gala. If you notice, I’m not charging for access to anything I write. The Supporter tier is literally just if you want to support. That’s it! The Lover tier is a fun add on. It was never meant to be something serious as if I’m Roger Ebert, paywalling access to my reviews. I have incredible commitment issues—I always start things and never finish. That’s why I’m doing the 10x10 with Jared, even though I hate half the films we watch, so I can point to 2026 ten years from now and say “hey. that’s when I actually completed a year long project for the first time.” That’s all! I just want to have fun. I hate people who say “it’s not that serious” but they’re correct in this singular instance. This is not serious. I do want to do serious things! I’m working on two projects right now that I desperately want to get published—being on social media is time taken away from working. I want to hang out with people, being angry about a Twitter interaction ruins my time with them.
I like writing, I like forcing you guys to read my thoughts on something, but the theme of this year seems to be figuring my way out of the arbitrary boxes I’ve been in. I wrote about how I’m rating less—I genuinely enjoy watching more now that I’m not spending time thinking about a number. Now, my arbitrary box seems to be myself. My constant struggle is with the capitalistic system I was raised in—everything had to be monetized and marketed, while I continue to insist this Patreon is simply for fun and a hobby. I didn’t get the benefit of figuring this out with 10 subs, had I realized there would be interest I would have made it private or planned better. That’s a flaw, always assuming there’ll be zero interest in something I do, but that’s for therapy and not y’all. I’m incredibly thankful that Apple has the ability to hide apps now, because if it’s not on my screen I will forget about it. Once I reactivate to share this, I’ll probably forget about it again, but at least it’ll be there in case people want to follow or subscribe or support—my own struggles should not preclude people from seeing what I’ve written or shared. At worst, it’ll be an archive. This is poorly thought out and almost entirely from my phone, so please don’t interact with it like a well thought out fancy post. Us Julias need editors too, okay?? Love you.