Dear writers: life after Twitter

Out of the ashes I rise with my red hair. And I eat reply guys like air.

This is the thing I didn’t want to write. There are several reasons for this. The first is that writing this means there’s a reason to write it. And there being a reason to write it means this is no longer just hand wringing or staring anxiously into a potential binfire of a future that may not come to pass. It means The Thing has really happened. (Incidentally, Google docs corrected the word ‘binfire’ to ‘bonfire’ three times before it would allow it - I’m so nostalgic for The Before Times I actually got a little emotional at being ‘well actuallied’ by autocorrect). 

The second reason is admitting The Thing has happened means telling the world that things are officially not going well for me - in real time. I’m not great at expressing in-the-moment vulnerability. I’m more of a ‘look back with an air of detached wisdom at the follies of my past self and tell the world what I’ve learned from the safety of my perch’ kind of wanker. 

I’ve always believed that declaring yourself a failure, even in passing, begets more failure. That it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. A creative career is an ever-evolving beast and your luck can change on a dime - in positive and negative ways. Snakes and Fucking Ladders, isn’t it. I don’t like to forfeit, declaring myself the loser and stomping off to my room, taking the dice with me so nobody else can play - which is why my family will no longer play Snakes and Ladders with me.

I won’t do that here. So here it is. The Thing really has happened. Twitter is dead, its grave marked only with a sad ‘X’ - a pauper’s grave. You’d think the world’s second richest fucker could afford to give it a decent burial, or at least blast it into space.

In any case, things are miserable for writers and I, as I have been self-importantly telling anyone who’ll listen since I was an obnoxious creative writing undergraduate, am a writer. I should caveat this - things are miserable for writers RIGHT NOW. I am not yet on my lofty perch, dishing out steaming nuggets of truth and disgusting analogies (maybe just the latter). I might never be again - but there’s still everything to play for. That is once we all figure out which game we’re playing next (please - no more Snakes and Ladders for the love of fuck, I’m a really sore loser).  

But just for now: the untimely demise of Twitter is a personal and professional catastrophe for anyone who isn’t A Big Famous or one of the clever few who somehow diversified early on. Well done you, you smug fuckers - the next few rounds are on you though. 

That’s the third reason I didn’t want to write this. I’m reading back my teeth gnashing over what are essentially pixels on a screen with a stranger’s eyes. Maybe someone who has only ever used Twitter to discuss That Thing They Like with other people who also like That Thing They Like. I can hear exactly how I sound. Histrionic much? I mean - people have real problems - which, conversely, given the climate, is a bit of a bloody understatement. 

And God, I wish I was being hyperbolic. I almost always am. It’s kind of my brand. Or it was, back when I kind of had a brand - in the olden days of digital relevance. 

So let me explain what Twitter was to me as a chronically ill autistic writer who cannot, for myriad health reasons, work a regular office job or go out and network in my industry down the pub (for the purposes of this piece, please take that at face value - I’m not above listing every health condition and symptom as a ‘please believe me’ trauma response, complete with photographic evidence - some of them are absolutely gross and I’ll make damn sure to ping them over at tea time). 

Twitter was my place in the world. I know, I know. I can hear you screaming at the screen ‘but it wasn’t real life’. The thing is, for people like me for whom real life can be completely inaccessible, it was as real lifey as life was going to get.

Twitter was where I found likeminded people, like-neurotyped people - a whole mutually supportive network of people who Just Got It in a world of people who generally, resolutely, Do Not Get It. 

I made some of the best friends I’ll ever have on Twitter. People I couldn’t now imagine my life without. And now, because a bratty billionaire showed up on the beach to kick down the sandcastle I’d spent over 13 years building on a mindlessly destructive whim, God only knows which people I might one day have come to not be able to imagine my life without I will miss out on in the future. Farewell, fictional Futurefriends - I never knew you but I loved you anyway, in another less toxic timeline.

And - this is the hardest part to type - because it sounds just, well, desperate. Twitter was my voice. I had almost 60,000 followers,. I know - it sounds like something I might bellow into the faces of unsuspecting strangers as I wander the streets barefoot in my dressing gown and tiara - watching their terrified eyes as they try to pry me off their lapels on their way into Waitrose - but, and I can’t stress this enough, I had almost 60,000 followers. 

It wasn’t about clout or numbers or even the dopamine hit of watching those lovely likes and shares come in (although I did enjoy that - I’m only human). It was about being heard. 

As a disabled person who doesn’t get out much but desperately wants to change the world for the better - or at least give it my best shot, I can’t overstate the importance of being heard. Being disabled and neurodivergent means having to fight with everything you have to be listened to, believed, taken seriously. I had that. And now I don’t.

Being heard wasn’t just about ego (although, also - still only human and yes, I have one of those pesky egos we all like to pretend we can do without). It was about power. Not power in the way certain billionaires and their acolytes mean it. Not a power of dominance. Power to affect change. Power to express your experience, to advocate for others, to alter people’s perspectives.

And to have your own viewpoints challenged - to hear how the world is for people you might otherwise never meet. To think seriously about how you can best support marginalised people in important struggles for rights and freedoms. A collective power built over years of conversation and construction that I can’t even begin to imagine how to replicate. Not yet, anyway.

It wasn’t a perfect kind of power. For a start, it came with a dickhead tax - every promising exchange came with a side-serving of at least a dozen… well… cunts, ready to take your words in the worst possible faith or ‘just ask questions’ your day away. Sometimes it felt like being part of the discourse - sometimes it just felt like you were telling people to fuck off all day. Like I say, imperfect.

It was a power that meant being accountable for your own words and actions in a way that was, frankly, terrifying. Saying the wrong thing wasn’t just a recipe for the dreaded Getting Cancelled - but it had the potential to do real harm to vulnerable communities. Great power, great responsibility - as the old adage goes.

But honestly, I’d take every dizzying, frustrating, awful moment of it over the silence. The devastating silence of not being heard - and worse, not being able to hear others. The sad static of a dead line. However empowering it felt to be heard, it is equally devastating to suddenly find oneself screaming into a void of indifference.

And lastly, and most self-absorbedly, the murder of Twitter (to call it a collapse is frankly letting him off the hook) has decimated any illusion of financial and professional security I might have comforted myself with as a writer. 

I know - if I wanted stability and security, I could have picked any other profession in the world other than freelance writer. Except, sadly, that isn’t true. This is what I know how to do. I have literally no other skills - unless you count being able to dislocate my thumb - or making social occasions awkward (often by asking if anyone wants to see me dislocate my thumb - seriously, I’ve got nothing else). 

In The Before Times, I could start a project - any project - knowing that if I did a good job, it would gradually find its audience. My books, while probably not Sunday Times Bestsellers, would find willing readers. My podcasts would find willing listeners. My ridiculously unoriginal thoughts about how Omelette sounds like a nice baby name would still crop up on social media years later, like a recurring infection from a one night stand that frankly wasn’t worth it (IRL people, you really don’t need to send it to me *every* time you see it - but I appreciate the love).

Now, with my debut novel Eight Bright Lights out in eBook (ahem - might as bloody well shove it in front of your faces while you’re here) - a lifelong dream come true and the result, as any writer will know, of a wonderful and painful metaphorical birthing process - and the book coming out in paperback and audiobook in November (SERIOUSLY GANG TAKE A FUCKING HINT), I’m left with a feeling of total impotence over my own future success.

Don’t get me wrong - I have incredible publishers. They have a shit-hot marketing team. I’m lucky. I’m really fucking lucky. I trust them and their ability to give my very Jewish festive rom com (WHICH YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE JEWISH TO ENJOY, JUST SAYING HINTITY HINT HINT) its best possible chance in the world. 

But - and this is no reflection on anyone else - I am a classic control freak. I want to do all I personally can to make sure the characters I love, who lived rent free in my head for years (especially Hannah, that’s incredibly on brand for her, which you’ll discover in the first chapter of my book HINT), who were my company during the total isolation of the height of Covid, my lights in the darkness and my reason to drag my ass to my office every day and Keep Fucking Going… anyway - like a pushy stage mum, I want to do everything I can to give them their voices and places in the world. How can I do that for them if I no longer have mine? 

And the new characters - the ones that are beginning to stir to life in my mind, whisper stories into my subconscious, mingle in my silly brain, creating conversations and stories and laughter and chaos - what will become of them if I can’t help them be heard? They will remain forever words on the page - trapped in unread books, flat and two-dimensional, never to have life breathed into them through the power of a reader’s imagination.

Also, yeah - for all my lofty artistic ambitions, there’s the small matter of how will I pay my bills and eat and stuff? I’m scared. I’m really fucking scared. But, you know… details. 

Anyway - for the last couple of months I’ve been wallowing in despair. I’m big enough to admit I enjoy a good wallow from time to time. My moments of galvanisation, my new ideas and the excitement they breed, quickly stymied by the same roadblock - the ‘what’s the point?’ of it all. Where will it all go?

I keep thinking, in panicky terms, about what MY BRAND is. What is the one unifying theme of my existence as a complex, messy human, with random niche interests like recapping 1980s episodes of Neighbours or convincing my best friend he loves The Beatles as much as he loves Kate Bush? What is The Very Interesting Mainstream Thing that I can tout as my shop front, to present myself as worth listening to now there’s no number on a profile to glance at to prove that whatever random thing it is I’m doing, it might be worth the ride?

I guess that’s what I’m going to do here - write my thingies, whatever they are, and try to trust that I might be enough. My thoughts on the world, on my life, on my passions, pouring my weird heart out, like my teenage diary (except less hyperfixated on a poor unsuspecting crush named Matt, who apparently had very dreamy lips, if the extensive use of the sticker set my diary came with is to be trusted).

It’s new - it’s scary - and it’s exposing as hell - but maybe that’s one of the benefits of the silence. If a comedy writer falls on her face in the woods and nobody is around to not laugh at her, because a pratfall is frankly the oldest hack trick in the book, has she completely lost track of this metaphor?

Anyway - I - and all of you, writers who have ventured this far with me (thank you, you just sustained my soul for another 1000 years at least) need to keep in mind something important. There is a difference between not being able to see the path ahead and the path ahead not existing. And there is a difference between the path ahead not existing - and the path ahead not existing - YET. Right now all but the most famous and successful writers are Gromit on the same train, desperately laying down our own tracks as fast as we can while it feels like the train we’re on is careening out of our control. But it won’t be like that forever. And however alone we might feel on that runaway train - we’re all on it together. We just can’t see each other. Yet.

So here are is insufferable takeaway from all of this - not quite from my perch but from my imagined future perch to yours, however we get there:

WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE AND WE WILL GET THERE AGAIN.

We have all had moments in our lives where we can’t see how things will possibly work out for us - and they somehow have, often in ways we could never have imagined. 

And we have collectively built a writing platform, community and information-sharing hub and place for ourselves before. We will do it again. And I’m going to start right here - on this silly Substack where I have no idea what I will write about, or why, or if anyone will read it - but hey, it’s a piece of track. And with enough of us laying them down, eventually, somewhere, somehow, that will become a path - no, THE path ahead. 

So courage, dear purveyors of delightful nonsense, home truths and important words that need to be heard: whatever game we all end up playing, we will pick up the pieces and play it together. We will support each other’s work, amplify each other and find that sweet dopamine fix of relevance again. And there really IS still everything to play for.

I’ll be making this A Thing, so please do subscribe - and in the meantime, find me on Bluesky and Threads by searching for Sara Gibbs