Does anyone else out there feel like Twitter just headed south, what with all the politics, and Nazis, and unfortunate negativity towards #MeToo, and the Alt-Right, and the general lack of emotional intelligence, and #<insert-your-complaint-here>? I’m not able to deal with all of that right now, and I strongly considered quitting the service. I even took a break for a week or two. However, I really like micro-blogging, I have a good size following, and I love the different types of information I can access on Twitter, even though I primarily use it for keeping up with business contacts. That last bit is especially true for getting my #StarTrek fix when the work day is done! Twitter’s Trek community is amazing!
Here’s the list of things that I’ve done to clean up my Twitter feed, and make it worth my time. So far it is looking really great and interesting again. If you’re in the same boat as me, I hope this helps you out.
- Unfollow some folks – I started unfollowing some folks, mostly those who are inactive or rabble rousers. I especially unfollowed feeds that just depressed me, no matter how “valuable” some might find there feeds. (Here’s looking at you @SenBobCorker! #byebye)
- Mute people – Actually @Mrs_Billings put me onto this. Wait… did my wife mute me!? At any rate, muting someone you follow prevents their Tweets from showing up in your timeline, but you still see notifications and direct messages from them. It is a good way to keep following your friends even if you don’t want to see all their My Little Pony tweets, for example.
- Use more lists – If neither of the above are a great fit, putting feeds on lists is a good way to only check in when you want. I’m in the process of moving everyone I follow related to #StarTrek to a list because sometimes in the middle of the day I cannot afford to get side tracked by #AshIsVoq, even though I would really love to clear my schedule for it!
- Adjust your interests – Twitter tracks your “interests” for its own uses and for companies. You can set which of these auto-generated interests that you would like to see in your feed in the data settings.
- Mark uninteresting tweets – I’ve started telling Twitter when I don’t like tweets. I’m not sure how well this feature works since they keep posting certain types of content that I don’t like into my feed, but I’ll keep it up for a few days and see.
There you go. I’ll let you know how well this works in a few weeks. Sorry if I unfollowed, muted, or listed you, and you find that offensive. I promise I won’t be offended if you do the same to me too because I now know just how hard it is to get a Twitter feed under control!
Jay's Whiteboard 