It’s hard to imagine Twitter without celebrities, that’s why it’s surprising not to find Louis C.K. among the most followed people on the social networking service. The comedian’s twitter is completely gone — he doesn’t even use it to promote his shows anymore.
Rolling Stone reports that C.K. spoke to Opie about why he quit shrinking down his thoughts into 140 characters:
“It didn’t make me feel good,” the comic said. “It made me feel bad instead. So I stopped doing it.”
C.K. was clear it wasn’t trolls or overwhelming negativity that drove him off the site, but rather his own contributions. “Any time I tweeted anything I was like, ‘Ugh don’t like the way that came out.’ And then four and a half million people saw it! It was the worst things I ever said, heard and seen by the most people. It’s the worst possible scenario.”
Even those of us who don’t have four million followers — can you imagine? — have likely had anxiety about what we’re tweeting, and once a tweet is sent, it’s up immediately. C.K. doesn’t think all that instant gratification is good for any of us.
“It’s too instant, I don’t think the speed helps dialogue,” C.K. said. “I think it’s why everything is kind of fucked up and polarizing, because people are going too fast, they’re trying to react too quickly.”
Instead of focusing on winning fans on social media, C.K.’s focusing on Louie, which is in its fifth season. He was going to take a longer break between seasons, but changed his mind because he got high (because he got high, because he got high).
“One night I got high, I smoked pot, and I got excited about a whole idea for the next season,” C.K. said. “I started writing it, and I was like, ‘This is gonna be so great, I want to do this now.'”
C.K. was able to work out a last-minute deal with FX for an eight-episode season, then recalled: “I woke up and I looked at all the shit I wrote when I was high, and I was like, ‘This is terrible!’ I didn’t use a single idea. I had 10 pages written, 10 stoned pages.”
Good thing that didn’t stop him, because you can do some of your worst writing when you’re stoned. This is where I’d give an example by publishing something from my own high school poetry notebook, but thankfully getting high also makes you forget where you left things.
(via Rolling Stone)