Yesterday I wrote about my complicated relationship with Twitter and Instagram. I’ve been getting a bad vibe from some of what I’ve been choosing to read on Twitter as of late. These vibes were coming from a few sources…

1. Twitter’s coverage of COVID-19…through its news feature which appears in the iOS app…if you show interest in a particular topic.

2. A few people I have recently decided to follow, due to my interest (innocent at first) in COVID-19. I’m not going to share who because who they are doesn’t really matter…the content that they are posting and I am consuming (and how that content has affected me) is what matters.

The coverage of COVID-19 and the content people are posting is inevitably going to be highly “P”-olitical in nature. That coverage and content begins to weigh on a person over time. In my case it’s turned a genuinely innocent interest in something into a daily validation/verification that my views of the world are correct. That all became painfully “present” in my mind last night when I found myself following people that others are following on Twitter and doing an Amazon search for a book on the Impeachment process that one of these “renowned” people published a few years ago. WTF?!

My whole re-entry into Twitter (at least on my iPhone XR) was meant to bring a certain aspect of joy into my life…as much as a social media platform can assist with that. Looking back at my actions last night caused me to question if in fact I was accomplishing “this” with my recent ascents into the aforementioned rabbit holes. So…what does a person do? I went to the Internet to see if there was a way to hide or delete Trends/Who To Follow on Twitter. My search came up with nothing helpful to me. While digging around on the web client I saw that I could change the location that assists in producing Trends. So…I changed it to another country for a few reasons. One…my wife and I visited this country for our 25th wedding anniversary and it is a place I definitely want to travel to…with my wife again someday! Two…changing the location to this country will…at least I think…give me a different perspective…with regards to what is happening. I also figured out that on the iOS app you can hide the news feature (if that’s what you call it) from the user experience. I also unfollowed the 2 people that I recently followed out of pure, innocent interest in COVID-19.

Why didn’t I think of this before today?