I used to post an awful lot on Twitter. I couldn’t tell you how many times a day exactly – but after discovering the platform in late 2010, I became intoxicated by the feeling that I was able to participate in a sort of global conversation. Here, I felt, was a platform that anyone could join, and on which anyone could be listened to. Twitter seemed to connect people: commentators spoke in enthused terms about the role Twitter played in the Occupy movement; the student fees protests; the Arab spring.

I posted, I made friends, I met people, I talked to people who I would never have been able to connect with otherwise. The relationships I made on Twitter shaped my values, my politics, my life. The “weird Twitter” style of humour gave me a fair few phrases that will never stop rattling around my brain: every time I walk into a pharmacy, I think about buying some ear medication for my sick uncle “who’s a model by the way”. Whenever I read something about Watergate, I imagine Richard Nixon condemning the movie Fantastic Mr Fox on the basis that its lead character wears “a [expletive] corduroy suit”.

I met the mother of my children on Twitter – I moved to Berlin to be with her, and then we moved back to the UK together. Through Twitter, I, who am really just some guy, was offered work writing op-ed columns; appearing on television; even writing a book. As embarrassing as it feels to admit, it was on Twitter that I became a person.

I still use Twitter – I will never........

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