I have been sleeping with a corpse, unwilling to acknowledge the transformation from flesh to dusty sharp bones. The corpse has been infected with worms and bacteria and it has been making me sick for a long time.

Yet somehow I was still tangled up in X. I still called it by its old name. I saw the decay but sprayed some expensive perfume on the corpse. I had invested so much time into Twitter. There are still so many writers and I had created these amazing lists to bypass the algorithm. I blocked tens of thousands of accounts trying to create a safe bubble in a dangerous space. I felt like I was doing something by not letting musky take it from me. But he wins if I and others like me stay in the fight.

Sometimes when I get afraid to take a leap, I map out small steps. “Put one foot in front of the other and soon you’ll be walking out the door.”

If you have already exited x, fantastic! If you haven’t, perhaps my steps will help you. Either way, I’m sharing my steps so out readers and writes know what we are doing.

1. Establishing Tangled Locks Journal on other platforms. Ever since Elon bought twitter, I have been setting up accounts on other platforms including Bluesky, threads, facebook, instagram, and a few more that may or may not exist anymore. I also have professional accounts on Bluesky, Substack, and threads. (I always have contingency plans!) I am waking up those sleepers — posting, engaging and seeking out writers and artists, readers, and good people who reject bigotry.
2. I limit my time on x to a quick dash in and dash out. I do not look at any posts no matter how provocative they are. The vile things that have been posted about women have made their creators money. No ones changing those people’s minds so even reading their posts adds nothing to my life.
3. I have made the x accounts private and rewrote my info to point to our website and how to find us on other platforms.
4. I will be making a request from X to download our data before closing the account. I will use that archive as a resource to build up the other social media accounts.
5. I am looking for friends and like minded people on other platforms by engaging, using hastags and inviting people to join.
6. I will rewrite our contact information page to highlight other platforms and let people know we are leaving x.
7. As we strengthen the alternatives for social engagements, we will set a target for deleting the account.

I believe that writers need to have their own websites and that we need to rethink the trade off of other platforms of convenience for loss of control over our own networks and context. I like the Fediverse and think about how we might be able to have our own server. Even as we move to other platforms, the vast majority of platforms are in the control of male oligarchs who do not have our interests in mind.

I would love to hear what other x users have got planned. You can find us at tangledlockslit on all platforms. If you follow us on other platforms, please make a point to say hi on a post. We remain passionate about amplifying the work of our writes and artists.