I've been wasting too much time on this website lately. In an effort to reduce the temptation to endlessly scroll, and to make my interactions more meaningful, I decided to unfollow everyone except people I know IRL or people I have corresponded with

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) May 3, 2023

Apologies if you notice that I've unfollowed you. It wasn't because of anything you did or said. (It's not you, it's me.)

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) May 3, 2023

...of course, most of the Twitter accounts that I had followed won't notice I'm gone.  (Mike Duncan, for example, currently has 124.9K followers on Twitter, doesn't know who I am, doesn't know I've unfollowed him, and if he did know, I'm sure he couldn't care less.)

But there are also a number of smaller accounts that I had followed, and that had been following me back.  Some of them global warming twitter accounts--holdovers from the days when I used to obsessively tweet about global warming.  And some of them were English Teaching accounts--holdovers from the days when I was trying to re-orientate my Internet presence towards professional advancement, and was trying to carve out a space for myself in ELT Twitter.  (See HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, Etc.)

And some of those smaller accounts were also booktube accounts--holdovers from the days when I was trying to be more active in the booktube community.  (Unfortunately, a lot of booktube twitter is just booktubers lamenting the fact that they don't have more subscribers, an issue that I addressed in this vlog, Let's talk about social media addiction and Booktube.  I'm not entirely sure the community appreciated that video, so maybe it's just as well I'm stepping back from Booktube twitter.)

I have, you can see, gone through a few different phases since I joined Twitter.

...anyway, there was a chance some of those smaller accounts that had been in a reciprocal following relationship with me might notice that I had unfollowed.  (Probably they wouldn't notice. But still, I thought it never hurts to clear the air.  Just in case.  Just to make sure there are no hurt feelings.)