A Timely Reminder That You Absolutely Never Have to Tweet

If you’ve been online today (God help you) perhaps you’re aware that a piece masquerading as critical discourse—while really just being a coming together of two oversized egos—ran in the newspaper of record. In other news, it’s a day ending in y.

Lord alive, online has been bad: media types justifying their friendships with people whose politics support atrocities at home and abroad, justifying why they’re not friends with those types, and wringing hands about whether they have the right friends at all.

The moment is ripe for a reminder: No one cares about the machinations of media people. From the inside, it can be easy to conflate “Everyone on my Twitter feed is talking about this” with “This is important and normal people care.” The overlap here is slim, and it contains zero stories about media personalities jerking each other off.

My final piece of advice, today and always: You absolutely do not have to tweet about this. You don’t need to have a measured take—or any public-facing take at all. Before you send a tweet, think to yourself: Why am I doing this? Interrogate why you’re posting about a thing we could all ignore. You will find yourself posting far less, and you’ll be all the better for it.