I am gutted that Twitter has become a a right wing trollfest. I joined waaay back in Dec 2006 (predating me having kids AND being married!) and it has been such a great tool both for work and for more social things.

To leave or not to leave that is the question #

So stopping engaging on Twitter has been a simple task as lots of the tech and community people I followed have moved over to Bluesky. I am a bit betwixt about deleting my account totally though as I am a hoarder and throwing 18 years of posts away seems hard to get round to.

I don't have the issues of high profile posters as my posts being there are doing very little other than taking up some rows in a database - Elon isn't gaining much from epic tweets such as "Exit poll shmexit poll!" and "Why would a pen tablet suddenly start acting like a mouse? Grr".

I don't really gain much from them either! So I decided to have a scan through my years with the cute little blue bird and see if there was any reason not to delete an 18 year digital imprint.

2006 - The beginning #

I joined in Dec 2006 and tbh not a lot occured.. probably as no one else was on there! It felt a bit like shouting into a void.

Not a lot going on in 2006

2007 - Tumbleweed #

I think I must have signed up after reading a tech article and then drifted.

Nothing going on in 2007

2008 - A void #

This is not looking good.. maybe Twitter isn't worth doing anything with.

Not a lot going on in 2008

2009 - My wrist hurty! #

I broke my wrist whilst training for a mountain bike enduro

Tweets about a broken wrist

2010 - Enter David Cameron :( Cries #

The beginning of a Conservative shit show! Other highlight being double booking seeing Slayer in Amsterdam with a wedding.... I went to see Slayer.

Slayerrrrrr!

2011 - The end of websites #

Considering I am about 5 years into 35,000 tweets of tweeting here it is still fairly low number yearly posts. Seems we thought maybe Facebook spelled the end of the traditional website. Glad that hasn't been the case!

Seems we thought websites might be no more

2012 - My first posted photo #

We got an allotment... mad to think it took that long for me to post an image... maybe we were a bit more careful about sharing 'all the things' back then.

A very overgrown allotment

2013 - Things I still haven't achieved #

2 things stick out in 2013... that one time I reached inbox zero (currently have 12,766 unread messages in my inbox) and also the fact I have wanted to do a bivvy on each solstice for a long time and fail every single year!

Inbox zero
Bivvy fail

2014 - The Pebble #

A bigger volume of tweets now, lots more discussion about cycling and football as more people join and it becomes mainstream. A loved my Pebble watch! I actually still have it in a box in the attic.. wonder if there is still a community around them.

Pebble Watch

2015 - Work colleagues get onboard and I get a yellow belt in Kung Fu #

In 2015 things were definitely busier with lots of work related tweets - an agency in Leamington I worked at had just moved into some amazing new offices that used to be a bar.

If only I had carried on the Kung Fu.. I would literally be a ninja now!

I have a yellow belt - I am dangerous

2016 - Ham tradition begins #

I started cooking a ham for Christmas.. this is a tradition I have managed to stick to.

Ham
I also did an alphabet of animals as I was getting back into illustration, an Ant with an Accordion, Octopus with an Orange and so on.
T Rex

2017 - Starting to overshare #

Well by 2017 I am definitely shariong loads more photos and plenty of random chit chat. Stand outs are:

My first attempt at making sourdough bread ( part of my completion of hipster bingo)

Bread
I built a traversing wall in our hall for the kids!
wall climbing
Much more beer related postings.
Beer

2018 - Books, beer and much more gif sharing #

I made an attempt to start reading more ( I wonder when Goodreads began - maybe there is a link there)

Books
Inktober illustrations
inktober
This was the first year I posted animated gifs it seems.
Beer

2019 - The homer gif! #

Seems this was the first time I posted what has become probably my most used Gif! The amount of times since I have 'homered into the hedge' about something.

Homer

2020 - Too many tweets and not alot about he pandemic #

The volume of tweets is hard to look through at this point, weirdly I didn't seem to do much posting during the pandemic.. probably busy trying to source eggs and t roll!

A couple of highlights tho:

We got a dawg!

Luna
A hilarious family game of DnD which I named elohttub island becasue I am a child!
Butthole Island

2021 - When I actually got covid #

A family dose of covid and talk of Twitter dying off... ironically at that time pre elon we still hoped it would stick around... oh what we didn't know was going to happen.

Luna
Butthole Island

2022 - NFT's anmd enter Elon #

Well I got it wron gabout crypto being in freefall.. but remember the whole NFT thing.. bet some people got very rich/poor!

We also got a Low Traffic Neighbourhood locally and people got angry.

me wrong
Butthole Island
Butthole Island

2023 - Bye bye bird - hello (soon to be) X. #

The big rebrand to X actually stopped my addiction to checking in on Twitter. The visual change disrupted me perfectly and so the decline began.

The end is nigh

2024 - The end is nigh #

Things start to tail off around October which is when I finally joined Bluesky. It is quite fitting that my last tweet is of a pint of beer... raising a glass to 18 years on a platform and bidding it farewell.

Raising a glass to all the good times.

And that's a wrap #

So there we have it.. after spending a day scrolling through my 35k+ plus messages there is no real reason to keep hold of any of it despite some amusing memories.

The connections I have made remain - and as is social media, 3 months on Bluesky has created some new ones. Will I actually delete my account? Probably not as I don't want someone else to have my @maxray handle. Will I be posting on X any time soon? Hell no!