Today I decided to start splitting up my tweets across two accounts. The account most folks have been following (@seacreature) will be used for tweeting announcements about projects I'm working on, as well as links to things I find interesting. This account will remain public and is still the best place to keep track of what I'm working on at any given moment. Pretty much everything else, including any conversations, will be done through my new private account (@gregory_t_brown). This is going to be a bit of a pain in the ass for me and has some downsides for the folks in my extended social network, but I think the experiment is worth it.

In the last three months, I've gained over 300 new non-spammer followers on twitter. My primary account is now followed by close to 1700 people, where I think a year ago it probably was watched by no more than 400 or so. This rate of gaining new followers is MUCH faster than than I could reasonably get to know the people who want to interact with me. When you add in the second tier effect of seeing followers of followers join into conversations, it means I'm spending more time talking to complete strangers than I am to my friends. While a bit of random interaction keeps things interesting, it is not something that scales upward gracefully.

Here's something that I struggle with all the time: I am emotionally impacted by pretty much every statement that is made to me or about me, and typically feel the need to respond to any question or comment someone has for me. When I am friends with someone or at least know who someone is and appreciate their work, I can apply a lot of context to my interactions with them, which helps prevent me from getting too worked up about disagreements or conflicts. In fact, I really enjoy healthy arguments with people I know and respect, because they challenge me and broaden my perspective on things. However, the same cannot be said for arguments with strangers.

More and more often on Twitter, I find myself in faux arguments with people who I feel either don't know or don't care about the relevant experience I have which forms the basis for my opinions. Similarly, I don't have the means to get to know everyone I interact with at even a superficial level, so I don't know how to evaluate their attitude on things. These arguments are usually silly, because they resemble something not unlike what you find on Reddit: people talking at each other rather than to each other. This is made worse by the fact that you can't help but be aware that these conversations are happening out in the open, in which a few thousand people could potentially be watching and judging your each and every move. I would like to think that it doesn't influence my behavior too much, but it'd be ridiculous to say it has no impact on me at all.

So that brings me to my experimental splitting up of my tweets. I like the broadcast functionality of twitter for sharing news about my projects or links to my writing. I like being able to have concise conversations that can be overheard by friends who might throw me a curveball every once in a while. But I don't like being a talking head getting rattled at by other talking heads, and maybe this change will prevent me from feeling that way. It's worth a shot, at least.

NOTE: I've also disabled comments on this blog, for the same reason as I mentioned above. If you want to respond publicly, write a blog post in response. If you want to respond privately, email me!