Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

@mauracunningham (2010-2024)

I deactivated my Twitter account this morning. It finally felt like time: I hadn’t posted there in months, and the post-election surge in Bluesky users has created a critical mass of other historians, writers, China folks, Ann Arborites, and Phillies/Flyers fans—the people I most want to connect with. Time to officially move on.

I didn’t make any attempt to preserve my Twitter archive of 36,000+ posts. I know other people who have imported their tweets into Bluesky, or at least downloaded them for digital posterity, yet I felt no hesitation about letting them go. Weird for a historian, I know.

This is because over the years my Twitter account became less about me and more about others whose work I wanted to support. Early caricatures of Twitter portrayed it as the place where users provided minute-by-minute updates on their days, and when I first joined the platform in 2010 I surely fell into that habit too. I also mimicked others who posted about all of life’s minor inconveniences and momentary outrages.

But eventually I realized that it felt petty to snatch up my phone and tweet every time I had to deal with a delayed train or administrative hassle. (Though, to be fair, I did once get a parking ticket cleared simply by complaining on Twitter about the incompetence of the Philadelphia Parking Authority.) Gradually, I turned to Twitter as a place to share books, articles, podcasts, etc. that I wanted others to enjoy as well. To the extent that I had a platform and a following, I wanted to use those to amplify the work of others. Yes, I promoted my own writing and events, but I tried to make those posts only a fraction of the total. Twitter, like these Weekly Wanderings, was a way to pass along the media that I’ve liked and found thought-provoking, and to encourage others to check it out.

I’ve brought that same perspective to Bluesky since creating my account there last fall. Sure, I’ll cheer the Phillies and lament the Flyers; I’ll sometimes post an observation or a joke that I can’t get out of my head. For the most part, though, I now approach these social media platforms as places to build communities of shared interests and circulate links to the work that I think deserves attention. If I criticize something, I try to do so in a thoughtful and (I hope) constructive manner.

I unofficially left Twitter when it turned into a morass of negativity and vitriol; I neither wanted to engage with or contribute to those conversations. But I appreciate the years I spent there and the connections it helped me create, so I’m hoping that other Bluesky users and I can take the lessons we learned on Twitter and bring that energy to a new place.

If you’ve read this and want to join me on Bluesky, I’m @mauracunningham.bsky.social.

Thanks for joining me this week.

Recent Publications

Recommendations

China Stories

Anatol Klass, “Can Cultural Exchange Save U.S.-China Relations?”

Isabella Qian and Yan Zhuang, “Why Did Tens of Thousands of Chinese Students Go on Night Bike Rides?”

John Ruwitch, “At Tiananmen Square, tight security with metal detectors reflects a changing China”

Zha Jianying, “Trains: A Chinese Family History of Railway Journeys, Exile, and Survival (Part I)”

Wanderings Around the World

Eleanor Beardsley and Nick Spicer, “How France uncovered the mystery of the forbidden photos of Nazi-occupied Paris”

Alexander Chee, “This Country Is Still That Country”

Jaya Saxena, “Martha Stewart’s ‘Entertaining’ Let Me Party Like It Was 1982”

Standout Story

To be collapse aware is to live with the sense that something about the way we live is coming to an end. And then to ask the next obvious question head on: If the incrementalist approach of our existing political and economic structures is not up to the task of improving things — climate, society, inequality, injustice — what comes next?

— Rosie Spinks, “How I became ‘collapse aware’”

Featured photo: Screenshot of my now-deactivated Twitter profile, November 17, 2024.