Many people are stressed by social media, especially Twitter.

Here is what I do to keep my sanity:

1. Be selective who you follow. Choose uplifting people and people you enjoy talking to.
2. Mute and block liberally. “But freedom of speech”. Nonsense. You choose your friends and parties in real life. Same applies to social media. It’s not immoral to ignore people who dunk on you. This also includes the annoying “devil’s advocate” personalities.
3. Choose your online persona. I mostly use Twitter for work and for engagement with the .NET community. But I’m still a human. Don’t let others dictate what you can and cannot talk about.
4. Choose wether you use your real name or a pseudonym. Social media is about authentic and real human encounters. Your name isn’t as important has how honest you can be in your conversations. Being anonymous is totally cool if that lets you be who you are.
5. Ignore what’s trending and mute words that trigger you. Many people, me included, will post about politics. Consider muting words from areas that trigger you.
6. Be kind. Sounds simple but is actually not always easy. One thing I’ve learned is that there is a huge difference between what people write and what they mean. Communication is hard and many are non-native speakers. But be kind to yourself too & don’t take shit either, see 2.
7. Take breaks. For most of us, being on social media is a choice, not a job. Don’t make it your job. Go offline when you’re overwhelmed. The truly important people in your life will know how to reach you.
8. Keep in mind that social media heavily distorts. Most of the time you’re presented with all the awesomeness that is happening in other people’s life. This can be depressing. But consider you often don’t see their struggles.
9. Live the life that makes you happy, not the life that generates the most likes. Social media can make you addicted to get other people’s approval. But don’t forget that the most important approval is given by yourself and the people you love.
10. Please spell .NET properly. I might be biased, but I found it improves my mental health.

More from Social media

I wrote 30 Twitter threads in 30 days.

The goal?

Learn how to craft interesting threads, and grow a following. It (mostly) worked.

- New followers: +2.5K (+100% MoM)
- Top thread: 373K impressions
- Top tweet: 2.5K likes

Here's what I learned. Quick thread 👇👇

To start, here's the most popular thread I've written.

Thoughts on what made it work, below.


1. Quality

The threads that performed best were (usually) the ones I put the most effort into.

One example is this one about Jeff Bezos's origins. I spent hours researching and drafting it.

It's worth taking the time to craft your


2. Timeliness

Capitalizing on the news can be one way to expand viewership.

When Fornite launched its #FreeFortnite campaign, I wrote this thread.

At the time, it was my 2nd best performing thread. It also introduced me to the lovely


3. Narrative Arc

Have a clear start and end in your mind.

I made this mistake with a few Amazon threads. I thought because my first one worked, I could keep the story going. But they didn't have as clear a narrative arc and were much less popular.

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The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?