I Left Twitter

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I guess I should offer those of you who followed me there some explanation. As is obvious to anyone here, I like to talk. A lot. Knowing this about myself I've always found it useful to guard the amount I talked publicly, because eventually I would something I regretted. 


I don't regret saying stupid things--that's sort of unavoidable. I regret babbling. I regret talking because I am empowered to do so, because there is empty space. I think of this as a kind of greed, a vice which has always haunted me in some form. 

And so at times I'd find myself babbling, taking no real account of who I was babbling to, or what I was babbling about. All of it wasn't babbling. Twitter was great for improving my French, for instance. But I think the sheer ease with which one could speak--to thousands of people--was a problem. It should never be that easy for me. I must be forced to think. I must remember that I don't talk for the benefit of other people, but, primarily, for myself.

At any rate, to my followers I apologize. It was somewhat good while it lasted. But I think I talk enough right here.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore -- not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-'90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

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