BlogaBull is off Twitter this season, here's why

RIP @bullsblogger , 2009-2024

It’d likely be more proper to provide a more holistic ‘state of the blog’ post as it heads into season 22 of covering the Chicago Bulls nominal basketball franchise. More specifically, it does feel like a bit of a new era if I follow through with my self-promise to stop Tweeting.

It’s been a slow death for the bullsblogger account on eX, pretty much coinciding with the platform’s slow death after its purchase by Elon Musk. I no longer live-tweeted games¹ and got into fewer spats with “Bulls Twitter”, and tried to keep it as a way of publicizing the blog posts.

There are ample reasons why it was becoming morally wrong to use that app anymore². But I found over the last few months especially it wasn’t even producing enough benefit to work the bile down my throat. I’m assuming it’s due to how the platform deemphasizes non-verified users. Now usually when people complain about the algorithm it’s never with the self-reflection of maybe it’s because their Tweets sucked. Though I don’t think mine did: I had some amazing Tweets over the years. It was a very funny account!

For the past few months I’ve been only getting something like 5-7% of views from Twitter, and when that was bumped to like 10% on occasion those posts also had more reach overall.

Most traffic comes from the email subscriptions. This is also a major change from the past (when on SBNation), but one I’ve been ok with. What I am struggling with in Twitter’s absence is the cases where people were using the app to get updates on when posts were made. And for the people that liked something I wrote but not enough to subscribe for every post, Twitter served as a good aggregator to where the good (or at least popular) shit would find its way to people who don’t check often.

I know this behavior because that’s how I follow blogs. Back in, well, the “blog era”, I used to use RSS and get every update for every NBA site I wanted to follow. As the number of them exploded that wasn’t feasible. Now that fewer people are on Twitter, and I’m not posting from there…well, I don’t think they’re going back to RSS?³

And and as a less significant but more will-be-nostalgic feature, Twitter replaced email as a way to keep in touch with other people in, to use another very old term, “the blogosphere”.

But as a way to discuss the team, even in its heyday it mostly sucked. “Bulls Twitter” didn’t have our best and brightest, folks⁴, so it wasn’t much for discourse. And for news gathering, the Woj+Shams-ification of “reporting” streamlined that type of content so thin that it kind of lost all meaning. And the decimation of relevant local independent reporting on the Bulls made those accounts more useless by the day. My blood would boil every time I’d see a dozen distinct reporters/media-partners post the same PR message in rapid succession.

What it was still pretty good for was it became the easiest and most prevalent way to share video clips. The teams and broadcast partners could distribute highlights very quickly. Quality independent accounts - ones that perhaps had bad basketball thoughts to wade through, but still - would identify more obscure but important tape, then edit it and publish it. For free.

This last bit doesn’t seem to have a replacement method, at least not yet, so I won’t be deleting my account. I often have daydreams of The Major Sports Industrial Complex waking up and realizing they don’t need Twitter and shouldn’t want to need it, they have the content and could create their own thing. I suppose that is more akin to a dream, as I don’t think any major sports organization or media company has left.

As far as individuals, I think less of everyone who uses Twitter still, but understand why it’s hard to stop when it’s actually beneficial. Especially in the Bulls current situation where they can’t get their new network a carriage deal for the biggest TV distributor in the city, they especially need to reach the kind of weirdos who would reply “gonna wake up the league” under a picture of Patrick Williams each of the past 4 years. And for media, especially the independent type, they still (if verified) can really extend their reach. For example, I don’t envy CHGO launching around the same time this major referral source is circling the drain, and understand why they persist on the platform like it’s 2015.

But I can’t see why ‘normal’ fans, at least those not reaching (or aspiring to reach) ‘personal brand’ level, should still be on Twitter any longer. It’s definitely a diminshed population, but I think we can do more. Yes, I can’t help but agree, this isn’t an airport so I don’t need to announce my departure. But I do hope that my story can inspire others.

Inspire them to leave Twitter Dot Com and come to BlogABull Dot Com! Because, as we all know, the best discourse on this team is happening in the BlogABull.com comments and Live Chats. OK, alright so we did have some State of the Blog, then! LIVE OPEN THREADS are back until Bulls games are irrelevant. Which will be…well, it’s probably setting a record, whenever it is.

1. wasn’t doing that too often anyway as I rarely can stand to watch Bulls games live anyway. They’re so long! And lately the competitive, interesting part of the season was over in mid-December.

2. It’s a personal preference, but one shared so widely it’s not hard to figure out. It’s something that’s gotten worse to operate in, AND using it at all supports someone I don’t want to support.

3. I squatted on @Bullsblogger on BlueSky, but don’t post from it yet. Follow me though in case I do?

4. And the the more you knew their non-basketball thoughts the less you thought of their basketball ones