Honestly, that's weird, I recently quit twitter as well for similar reasons. Browsing new artwork took forever, I'd waste tons of time on it, and it felt like it was consuming my life. For all the time I spent on it, I just felt worse for doing so. The algorithm's were awful as well, trying to get stuff noticed was a pain.

So yeah, just saying, you're not alone in these feelings.

I think that's a good decision, because there is just too much art on twitter to keep track of it all, especially given how crude and cumbersom browsing it is. To many artists work, that they spent many hours on, just vanishes amongst throwaway doodles that get 20,000 or more likes.

In addition, because all sorts of content and interests are mixed up together on twitter, instead of being portioned off on different websites, it can lead to unexpected and sometimes unpleasent encounters.

And because twitter has such a vast global reach it means that there are dozens, in anthro/furry art alone, of people posting their art who have reached professional levels of skill while still in their teens and who have got great amounts of views and followers, and four figure sums for commisions, tens of thousands of dollars a year on patreon etc, and it must be awfully discouraging for people starting out at later ages or who haven't had the advantages of an excellent art education from a young age, even if they just want to do art as a hobby or a supplement to their income. They may well look at such a constant stream of high-grade art and think "Why bother? What can I say that hasn't been said?", whereas where people are looking at the work of fellow hobbyists at varying stages of development, skill, and quality, they may be more encouraged.

In addition, because all sorts of content and interests are mixed up together on twitter, instead of being portioned off on different websites, it can lead to unexpected and sometimes unpleasent encounters.

For this and other reasons, artists are better off without social media. We retain control of who our audience is by staying away from sites that let other people decide that for us.

So the artist who drew Rose Quartz thin had to deal with rabid fans of the show, rather than just fans of her art and fellow artists. And because of that she was driven to attempt suicide, while on a more controlled platform or personal portfolio, it wouldn’t have been a big deal.

Social media is an approval by consensus environment - you might think you want a wide audience but get one too big and even a small fraction of assholes can be enough to ruin your life.

I don't blame you. Social media seems to be damaging on the psyche

Unfathomably good decision. Hopefully I'll become cool enough to do the same.
Never go back.

it is a terrible place for art

Take a break, you can come back anytime you want

You made the right decision <3

You definitely made the better decision here to leave Twitter, the place while great for getting out there is rather bad at the same time for ones drive and desire for looking for things in it. (Very much so when someone’s account is a mixed account of art and some other hobby.)

Good call, social media is a cancer, and twitter in particular is awful.

I just post what I post here there, retweet one or two tweets I see on my feed after scrolling for no more that 10 seconds, and then forget about it for the rest of the day. I just do that to mediocrely feed the algorithm when I remember to, to maybe get some more exposure. But otherwise I just refuse to use it because of how addictive it is taylored to be and how toxic everything else mentioned here by others makes it. Plus it literally depresses me getting there and seeing how vapid and ephemeral everything is.

Good! In the words of Wario, "Twitter stinks!"

No worries. I hope this can make art less stressful for you, no more unrealistic expectations.

Perfectly understandable. Twitter and other similar social media are often more way trouble than they're worth.

I had my fill of the fast-paced upkeep of social media during the Tumblr days. A year of constantly scrolling to keep up with, well, everything, was just so incredibly draining. The FOMO is real, and I can't begin to imagine the stress of a popularity race. I can't bring myself to do it again, but so many people exclusively post on Twitter that it's frustrating.

Yeah, never liked that place. Just the whole cancel culture stuff going on there and wasting hours browsing through images of memes and other random shit just to find one specific art piece I really liked can be very frustrating. It’s just not a art gallery friendly site to begin with

Twitter is a cesspit of hate, lies, and rumors where high school never ends and everyone is trying to be the popular kid. Leaving it is a smart decision. And like others have noted, social media isn't social. Probably never was.

this comment right here. took the words outta my mouth

... Not the response I expected. Especially given the response I got the last time I badmouthed Twitter. But not an unwelcome response.