Five Tips to Survive Becoming Twitter’s Main Character

You’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.

“Each day on Twitter there is one main character,” the axiom goes. “The goal is to never be it.” I have always thought, for those who still use Twitter (or really any social media channel) regularly, that both of these statements are wrong. Social media is so bifurcated and expansive that there are constant main characters on it at all times, all getting roasted in their individual channels, and, from my experience, people who post on these social media channels incessantly do so because they very much do want to be the main character, of everything, all of the time.

The first time I used Twitter was for a feature story I was writing for New York Magazine back in 2009, when I found myself in their San Francisco office at the very second their site was unwittingly breaking a story about a plane crashing in the Hudson River. I used it for a few years, first for fun, then out of a professional obligation, and ultimately I stopped scrolling through the site entirely, using it only as occasional promotion for high-profile pieces I’d written or for public pronouncements, a repository for pseudo-press releases, “Congrats to my friend Betty on her new book” or “I was sorry to hear about the death of my old college pal Harold,” that sort of thing. I am not judgmental of those who…