Five Things To Do With Twitter When You Suspect You're Doing It Wrong

This morning, someone asked: what the heck should one do with my Twitter account? She was afraid she was doing it wrong, that it had gone all stale or whiny or boresies. (That may be the case, but really, only you can decide if you are doing Twitter wrong! Let your conscience be your guide.) We have a few pro tips on shaking things up.

• Turn that puppy into your Dream Journal.No, literally. Seriously. Just speed-type your dreams out, first thing in the morning. This has the added benefit of auto-discarding followers who don’t really know you, or who don’t care about your dreams. If they don’t care about your very dreams, do they really care about you?

• Take some time out from your bloody lifecasting and lurk around as an amplifier. You know what? You have fun friends, or “friends,” probably. (Are Twitter friends “friends”? Sometimes! Sometimes not.) Take a break from putting your “original” “thoughts” on it and just become a (gross word alert) “reTweeter” of things that You Find Of Interest.

• Remake it as a place for fiction. Or start working as an invented character, or some weird alternate universe version of yourself. See also: Fireland, Jim Windolf.

• Restrict yourself-and go deep on a niche topic. Sometimes bad things happen when Twitter gets used as a broadcaster of recent pet activities and pet peeves. Why not a pet project? Why not focus it on a topic of serious interest to you or to your actual “life work,” and allow no other type of chatter? Whether a category of things (long-form journalism) or a topic (Russian books? 80s pop music?), putting some structure up on your business cuts out regrettable, morning-after Twittering. (See also: Wears the Trousers, Long Reads. )

• Delete your account. Not in like a big dramatic “I HATE YOU GUYS AND MYSELF” way. Just kill it! What’s the worst that could happen? And, if you want to go back a week or a month or a year later, you can always start a new account. Twitter, just like HPV, will wait silently for you.