Everything Happened | vol. 221

Posting at myself

My Twitter account is gone, or I guess stolen? Someone got in, then changed the password, then changed the email address associated with the account. The dial tone that is what’s left of Twitter Support sends me emails encouraging me to change my password if I am having trouble with unauthorized use. Over and over again in loops that would make Kafka say “woof,” or however you express the concept of “woof” in German. You can’t change your password if the email associated with your account is now one which you cannot access.

This also happened to writer and filmmaker Demi Adejuyigbe (“The Good Place”, all the “September” videos) and after nonstop campaigning on his own behalf for the last two months, he still does not have access to his Twitter. This guy is not Brad Pitt but he has famous friends and cultural clout. If he can’t get back into his account, what hope do I have.

It’s not that I need the “hell site.” It’s good for my writing career in the sense that I see which editors are moving to which publications. Sometimes the discourse plants the seed of an idea for a story. I’ve forged real friendships there, leaping to Instagram usually, watching them grow up, often watching their kids grow up, leaping to texts and in-person hangs when our geographies align.

But mostly Twitter has made me anxious, miserable, and sad. Since I was 24, I’ve had a steady wall of voices hollering at me every time I was bored enough to open the app and scroll, which it turns out, was constantly. Around 2010, I noticed that I’d begun thinking in tweets. My inner monologue was being flattened into short, quippy observations. I still do this but now my shitposts have nowhere to go. The system is closed now, my tissue is absorbing it all. One day I’ll have a thought so bad and with nowhere for it to go, my whole body will go septic.

Shouldn’t I be elated to be finally free, as one of my friends framed it to me? I’ve taken weeks and months off of the site before but always with the knowledge that it was mine to recover whenever I wanted. If I got it back, maybe I’d shut it down. But at least it wouldn’t be there tricking people like Uncle Bernie dead in his mansion.

I thought about creating an alt, sending “me” a DM, and asking “me” to post a goodbye message from me. I am sick at the idea of someone trying to contact me and either getting dead air, or worse, someone else. So far there is no public activity that reveals the account is compromised. And it’s still my face on there, lit by the Caribbean sun in the Dominican Republic this past January. Look how happy she is. It’s like she knew someday she’d get to stop posting.

I am not a public figure and do not overestimate my notability. I do not think someone would try to humiliate me on purpose via my compromised account. What’s far more likely is that at some point my face, gazing placidly into the orange-sherbet-colored sunrise, will start tweeting links to hardcore porn. That will be a bummer. I trust that if you wanted to know my taste in porn, you’d just ask me directly.

yr mate,
Evie
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(Is there a sort of Robin Hood type who can hack my Twitter and restore my email as the account holder? Pls email me if so.)