In 2012 people joked that Twitter was a place to talk about what you had for lunch. In 2022 the joke is that it’s a place to scroll when you want to feel absolutely miserable.
Twitter is a hellsite. We all know it. The question is why.
My theory: Retweets did it. This simple button, which allows anyone to share someone else’s tweet with their followers, turned posting into a video game where earning the most attention from the most people became the end goal. There are times when this is great—when someone makes a very funny joke, for example. But the ease of the retweet button prompts people to impulsively share, instead of taking the time to type out their own thoughts. And it turns out what people really like impulsively sharing is stuff that makes them angry.
Glance at the trending section right now—I’m sure half of it is “someone said something stupid/offensive/wrong and people are mad,” or some variation on that. I, for one, think Twitter would be a better place without retweets, so I figured out how to not see retweets anymore. It made my timeline a lot calmer, and my life less stressful. Here’s how you can do it, too.
There’s no official way to stop seeing all retweets, but there is a workaround. It’s a little bit of a hack, but it works really well. To get started, open Twitter’s settings and head to Privacy and Safety, then Mute and block, or click here.
Click the plus button in the top-right corner to add a new word to mute. Now, add “RT @.” Like this:
Just like that, all retweets will be banished from your timeline. Why does this work? Well, before Twitter made retweets official, users would manually type “RT” followed by the handle of the user they were retweeting. It seems like Twitter still uses this language on the backend, so muting “RT @“ mutes all retweets.
What it doesn’t mute are any retweets with comments, also known as quote-retweets. Personally, I’m okay with that—such retweets at least add a little context and opinion, instead of just impulsive sharing. Still, it would be nice to have the option to block those, too.
We all follow at least one person whose tweets are insightful but who also retweets way too much for their own good, and Twitter actually offers a way to stop seeing their retweets. To get started head to the guilty profile and click the three dot icon.
(Eric, who I’m using for this screenshot, is an outstanding Twitter user—not someone who retweets garbage. I needed to use someone for this example, though, so here we are. Sorry, Eric.)
From here you can turn off retweets for the user.
This user can no longer toss trash into your timeline. Well, they can, but they have to actually type that trash out—they just can’t propel it to your timeline by hitting a single button. Believe me: This can help a lot.
I muted all retweets from my timeline months ago. It’s been nice. For one thing it’s just a lot easier to keep up with my timeline, because I’m only seeing things written by the people I follow. But I also find there’s a lot less to be mad about.
It won’t work this way for everyone, but it worked for me. Which makes sense: It’s very easy to quickly retweet something that makes you mad, or makes you feel self-righteous about being mad. The retweet button allows you to do this impulsively, without thinking, whereas to write a tweet you need to think things through at least a little.
Which isn’t to say I didn’t miss anything—I probably did. A lot of my friends are writers, and they might have retweeted people talking about their articles. I probably missed some funny jokes. And some people use the retweet button to boost the voices of people who aren’t otherwise well represented. If more of the retweets I saw day-to-day were like that, I’d probably never consider blocking retweets.
Having said all that, I’m happy with the change. My timeline feels less cluttered, is faster to get through, and generally causes me less stress. Try it out for yourself.
