That website's engineered to get you hooked on nasty hateful ideas. I'm glad you saw the writing on the wall and pulled yourself out of the muck.

Yeaaap. Even without the hope of making up with anyone, deleting Twitter was the best decision I've made in months.

This was something I previously delt with back in 2016, although not on Twitter, I didn't even notice it come in, but now on that site ever since Elon took over, it's just gone overboard, and most likely that was the intention.

Eeegh... It was an awful time...

There's a reason I have been strongly against people on here using it. I am glad you snapped out of it and that I never saw what you retweeted. Thank you also for deleting it and making amends.

Best decision I've made all year, that's for sure -w-

indeed it is. seen what happens to others on that site.

OKAY UH, I INTENDED TO WRITE "hey it's okay, here's my own experience so I understand" AND WROTE TOO MUCH SO YEAH HERE IT IS IF YOU WANNA READ IT ALL:

Social media prioritises engagement at all costs - and this includes your mental health.

"This Video Will Make You Angry" by CGP Grey explains how and why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

So I'm glad you got out of that right-wing bullshit and left Twitter. It takes even more humility to admit it. I'm going to level with you on a thing that I don't often talk about, but have had to mention because screencaps got circulated not too long ago and have had friends worry that I fell down the far right rabbit hole of disinformation:

From 2014 to 2016 I was a disenfranchised (and uninformed gullible) gamer. Yeah, if you know what internet drama that consumed so many people I'm talking about, I was part of that hashtag hate campaign because I thought the hashtag and its proponents had me in their best of interests. They didn't. I was used as a shield for their hatred, and then they ignored/discarded me when I was found to not be the hashtag campaign's ideal type of member. I wasn't straight, and worse, I started to question my own gender. It didn't help that I was part of the furry community to start with.

I thought, at the time, that joining furry communities that shared my vibe would help me find an anchor. A place that I felt truly welcome. So I joined a random Telegram group chat channel and an (unrelated to the Telegram group) artist's Discord server. At first the "edgy" (read: bigoted, but ignored by me at the time because I was seeking approval) behaviour felt like a place where I could vent and joke with "friends" that "got me". Then the Telegram and Discord servers got gradually more extreme. Outright racism and transphobia was increasingly rampant (that I was too much of a coward to call out), and about a year after joining them I quietly left both places. Unfortunately what I said was wrong and derived from being uninformed, and those screencaps have haunted me ever since.

In the years after that, I had to unlearn a lot of shit as I realised that all the right wing bullshit was made just to make me angry. The problem is the right wing bullshit was uninformed at best, and disinformation at worst. It was purpose-made to entrap you with anger-inducing beliefs that sound plausible on the surface, but is lying with numbers, or claims made through a game of telephone.

I was fucking MISERABLE for all those years. 2014 to 2020 was half a decade (and a bit) that I'll never get back.

I announced I was trans in 2023, and got harassed on Twitter for it. So fuck Twitter, it's not worth using. Bluesky at least allows you to subscribe to a lot of helpful blocklists so you can curate your feed and prune it from right-wing politics.

This is all to say that I went through a similar character growth arc (falling for right-wing bullshit and then pulling myself out of the muck - it can happen to anyone, so you're not alone on this). If you need someone to talk to (via Telegram or Discord), I'm here to listen. I'm much happier now knowing that I have trans friends and all sorts of hyperfur gays who have my back. I've made a few really big projects (and plan on finishing yet another big project before too long~) which I wouldn't have had the energy to get in my dipshit years (seriously, almost all of the art I got of my vixen was commed in the past five years). Right-wing shit is DRAINING - both physically and mentally.

Oh! And I also helped manage and run a (non-furry) kids toy expo over those five years (the club has since been dissolved due to mounting insurance costs, ouch). Seriously, it's amazing what you can do when you're not surrounded by noise.

Take care and I hope to chat sometime again! ❤️

Hey, didn't expect to see you responding here! Yeah, it looks like I'm going through what you've gone through. It does make me feel better knowing I'm not the only one that made the mistake.

I got into the fandom as an artist on Deviantart. I draw purely for personal reason; real life blows ass so I retreat into my imagined worlds for solace, and I bring it to life through art. I did not make any attempt to reach out to anyone, and I still don't; I'm actually really distrusting of people, and my attempts to reach out to people always seem to end in disappointment. All my circle are people who came to me through my arts, like you!

I only hanged out in Twitter because there are poor artists there that are too stubborn to get on a better platform. And the memes and animal vids and video game clips. I already said why I engaged in right wing propaganda in first place. Do know that I live in a country with a nice and stable political climate. Things are chill here. I engaged because I wanted to show support for whoever's supposedly suffering from whatever nonsense was being shown. Then it just got out of hand -n-

Yeah, it's why I took my time to reply, because friends like you deserve the time to chat and be lifted up by each other. ❤️

And hah, same! DeviantArt was also my first foray into the furry community (before DeviantArt became DA, owned by Wix - and then became extremely anti adult art, so I ditched DeviantArt).

Thankfully my own country is also fairly stable, politically. American politics really does leach into everything, huh? Either way, s'good to hear from you again~

Aw heck, I am a fren >u<

Algorithms gonna algorithm. It doesn't matter what you're looking at, or even what site- they all create similar positive feedback loops.

Hopefully you'll be able to escape the doomscrolling trap in the future, friend.

I've learned my lesson. I'll hold truer to my "Humans are full of shit" outlook. I strayed from that and already regretted it... I wish there are people I can reliably count on for proper information.

Theres a reason people moved to Blue sky or itaku, significantly less political and alot more peaceful