Ray Foley

Things have come to a head for Ray Foley: he's virtually living a virtual life. Something has to go, and that something is his Twitter account.

A few years back, shortly after I first got an iPhone, I realised that I could get it to constantly and automatically synchronise my emails between the phone and my mail server. This wasn’t a feature of the phone that was a priority for me, but as happens with any of my gadgets, as soon as I noticed I could use it for this purpose, I had to set it up and give it a go.

I popped in my username and password and from then on, as well as texts and calls, my email messages were beamed directly to me, wherever I was. Even better, if I saved, moved or deleted an email on my phone, that action would be saved in my emails.

Not long after, I was sitting in a pub by myself when the iPhone became the loner’s best friend.

You probably know the scene: you’re meeting a friend for a pint when they text to say they’re going to be fifteen minutes late, but you’re on time. So what do you do? Well, order a pint and start playing with the phone! I got all my inbox (which is always cluttered with crap I never read) sorted and cleared out, while killing the boredom and avoiding looking like a sad-case with no friends.

I jumped in. At first, it was maybe once a day, then twice, then fifteen...

Soon enough, I was picking up the phone as soon as somebody went to the toilet, or if we needed an answer to a question I’d google for it. If I was watching telly and wasn’t really into whatever was on I’d be flicking through emails. I was checking it constantly - the phone became the first thing I’d look at in the morning and the last thing at night. Now the phone was a part of me.

Then along came the Facebook app. You could update your status and photos for your friends to see online, and I jumped in. At first, it was maybe once a day, then twice, then fifteen, then every fifteen minutes. And I was never really into Facebook in a big way, but it was there on the phone, so I’d give it a lash. And finally, Twitter landed.

Because I work on the radio, I’d been advised that this would be a useful thing to have for the show. We could be doing stuff on the programme, then we could write about it on Twitter, then we could see reaction to the stuff on our Twitter page.

But isn’t that what the texts are for? Isn’t Twitter just another excuse for radio presenters to be reading out messages from people who have nothing to do with the radio show? Of course I didn't have the cop on to object - again I jumped in with both feet.

Sad

I eventually found that I was constantly messaging. I’d write a “funny” line, give it a minute, click back in and see the reaction, read that for a while, click in for more reaction every few minutes until it subsided, then repeated the same. I’d be thinking of stuff to write or pictures to share, stuff that would incite more of a reaction. And all this on my phone, instead of interacting with real humans. What a sad existence.

But I wasn’t alone. As I surfed around the pages of other twits, I saw profiles where users had racked up tens of thousands of messages in a few months, while their followership numbers was in the teens. This means (for those of you not on the bandwagon) that these people write hundreds and hundreds of public messages every week via twitter to a handful people who are interested in reading them.

I was wasting all of my ideas by putting them on Twitter first.

Although my twittership (I’m making up these terms as I go) was pretty healthy, it had become a massive distraction from real life. Like most people, I have a family, a partner, a job, but instead of spending time on these elements of my life, I was spending all my time messaging people I hadn’t even met! If my daily Twitter usage had been added up, some days would sum to several hours.

And instead of doing my job - which is essentially to come up with ideas for things to say and put them on the radio - I was wasting all of my ideas by putting them on Twitter first. By the time I’d come into work I’d have nothing fresh to use.

One day I was talking to my mother who, as mothers go, is pretty cool. She likes current music, she emails and texts, but she asked me “what the hell is Twitter?” She’d heard a radio presenter she listens to banging on about it. As I tried to explain it to her, the futility and ridiculousness of it hit me. I could see her forming the question before she asked it: “Why?”

Addictive

And I couldn’t really give her an answer. It’s quite addictive. And now every radio presenter I hear is talking about his tweets, and how so-and-so or someone-or-other says this or that on Twitter. And it makes for such boring radio to listen to, I could puke. Surely if someone is being paid to be on the radio, shouldn’t they be the ones saying stuff and not a handful of randomers on the internet?

But I loved my randomers - so I cut back on talking about Twitter on the radio, but I didn’t cut back on using it.

Eventually, it all came to a head a few weeks ago when my wife and I were out for dinner, then headed for a drink after. As we sat there chatting, and eventually a lull in the conversation arrived, we both picked up our phones at the same time, reflexively. We laughed at that and I was about to write it up. And that’s where I stopped. That’s just fucking pathetic.

So I quit. I’m a TwitterQuitter. Well, I’ve taken a break, but TwitterBreaker doesn’t have the same ring to it. Because I don’t want to delete it, the account is still there and I’ve set up an auto-feed system from my blog to there, so if I have anything to share, I’ll sit down and think about it first before just throwing it out there.

I might come back, but I’m not sure. I have a blog, a radio show, this column and a podcast - if I have something to tell people, I’ll find another way.