the conflict and catharsis in deleting old accounts
A while ago I wanted to create a new twitter account to promote something I’ve been working on, but I ran out of emails I could use and didn’t really feel like signing up for yet another one, so I thought alright, maybe I’ll just delete one of my old twitter accounts or at least wipe it of everything so I can use it for this new thing.
If it wasn’t evident enough, I had way too many twitter accounts under my name. This wasn’t even the first incident of me sitting there, staring at the blue bird, wondering if I should deactivate a couple of them. The thing is, every time I bring myself to deactivate, I chicken out; I’ve had tidbits of nearly the entirety of my teenage years recorded and scattered across tweets, across different profiles under different names and identities.
Growing up at the same turn of the century where the internet grew into the tangled landscape that it is today, social media became a sort of archive of my youth: a documentation of adolescence sprinkled in bite-sized captions and a fine balance of photos ranging from awkward candids to meticulously orchestrated photos of coffee shop hangouts and the sunsets of long days spent with friends then thought to be people I’d keep around forever.
It’s even harder to let go of when you split the sentiment across so many corners of the internet like I did — over the past seven years, since I made my first twitter account, I’ve had give or take seven ? accounts to my name (as of writing this I believe I’ve deactivated all but the one that I use now). Admittedly, that’s way more than anyone could possibly need, but at any given time the most I would be actively using would be two or three of them — the rest remained to gather dust, untouched in case I wanted to look back and laugh at the angsty real-time musings of the past.
Looking back on it now, I feel as if the sheer quantity of individual online identities I cultivated through these many different @’s is something reflective of the adolescent end-all question that is “who am i?” Not to be that guy but the only way I managed to fit in and make friends in high school was by compartmentalising different parts of me, showing different faces in different places and hiding the rest and there’s nothing wrong with that! It’s human nature to present yourself differently based on the different roles you take on. At the end of the day, none of those faces were ever really false, but it reached a point where I feared to show glimpses of the other faces when in other circles, and that extended into my online presence as well. I’d have a personal account for schoolmates and family, a private “diary” account for thoughts that I felt were too trivial to go through the effort of jotting down on paper, accounts to participate in communities of fandoms where the norm would be to apologise for posting about something unrelated to the fandom in question.
Eventually I did come to terms with the idea that it’s alright to have all of myself in one place, both in real world social surroundings and online. It’s a bit easier when there’s less people I’m actively maintaining connections with, being a bit of a shut in who grew apart from most friends (some people really are only your friend cause you see them five days a week in school) and who rarely meets new people either (I simply don’t mix around much in uni and one way or another, COVID is in the way of new interactions), but the process of actually deactivating feels like burying a hatchet that bore no conflict to begin with. Can I really let go of everything? Is it shallow of me to hold so much sentiment towards a twitter profile? Will a day ever come where I will wish to look through all these hyper-specific moments in time?
Is sending those old friends a screenshot of an old post about them a sincere enough way to express that I still cherish them and the times we spent together?
Are the miniscule things documented in those posts even worth remembering?
At the end of the day, life is bittersweet and pauses for nobody. As much as I can lament about the good times, with every phase of my life, from moving schools to starting college and university and so on, there’s always a thorn or two in my side to get rid of as I carry on. Contrary to all the sentiment I hold, there’s plenty of negative incidents that tend to taint the joyful coming-of-age-film-like montage of memories I yearn to hold on to, and that’s enough for me to habitually cut off nearly every connection to a previous phase of mine as possible.
In a sense getting rid of these accounts feels like it would be the final nails in the coffin to lock away those periods of my life, but the nature of my online presence also feels much like being locked in a room of one sided mirrors. Twitter in particular has always been a crutch for me, a sort of journal with the added convenience of always being with me (my phone) and without the aspect of privacy. It’s always felt like the digital equivalent of yelling from a rooftop. It’s not that I was ever the sort to narrate my entire life story on the internet, cause I do value some privacy, but as unhealthy as this may be, I’ve always been comfortable with using it to channel my feelings in the moment. Keeping these accounts means keeping years of my feelings within arms reach. It’s a false sense of control, really. As if being aware of your past feelings alone is the solution to coming terms with the events that occurred.
How important is it to remember who I was, down to the nitty gritty insignificant details I’ve blasted online, 3 years ago? 7 years ago?
I’ve deleted the excess accounts but I can’t help but wonder if later on I’d regret it the same way I regret throwing away the diaries with tiny padlocks that I used to write in when I was in primary school.
Anyways I hate talking about the negative side of my relationship with social media, it makes me feel old. I’m only twenty. I have my entire adulthood ahead of me to spend pondering the downsides of popular technology and how the youth rely on it, but I’d like to see this more as a criticism of myself, and the relationship I have with the networking sites that successfully reeled me in as a daily user, one that habitually opens their apps just about every time I unlock my phone.
I do wonder if this essay contradicts itself; despite all I have just said, if I post this anywhere it means I am putting my feelings online yet again, but at least through writing this I have my thoughts organised, fleshed out, and not overly simplified by the confines of a 140 character limit.
Let’s just hope I don’t delete this.
(Note: The thing I wanted to promote and recycled an account for that I mentioned at the beginning? That account is now long gone too)
