and so i think about the past 11 years i spent doom scrolling & retweeting & shouting into the endless void. i think about the first customized theme and background i made of my high school best friends who i never talked to since. i think about the copy-pasting of tweets just to share them to my own feed before the retweet button came to be. i think about the numerous usernames i’ve made to try and sound funny—different puns and word associations—before all of us decided to settle for the names we’re given. i think about the friends i’ve gained and friends i’ve blocked and friends who suddenly disappeared without a word, and it’s always those goodbyes that hurt the most, for there had been a time when we shared so much joy in the one fandom we belonged in, until new interests drifted us apart. i think, then, about how easy it is to fall in love then out of it in an app that drowns us in toxic activism and vents of anger and alter accounts and opinions no one asked for within 240 characters that, still, never seem to be enough.
but amid this mass hysteria and loss and longing and joy and heartbreak and rage and euphoria i know that this app will die someday and another will take its place and none of this will ever matter, because there is no reality where we won’t somehow find our way back to each other again.