The Sad Truth About Threads

I deleted my profile today, with some misgivings. Threads did let me meet a few fellow AI creators I actually wanted to know.

Dealing with trolls, however. It’s never easy. Getting the last laugh is fun. It is also a waste of time and energy to wait for the perfect riposte. I would not clog a toilet just to clean it. Those volleys back and forth were doing the same thing: producing frustration and exasperation on purpose to quell an emotional need to conquer.

It is not that I cannot beat a small army of midwits. That part is sometimes entertaining. Watching people accuse me of using AI to answer their barbs is likewise boundlessly amusing, especially when their own anti-AI tools could have told them otherwise. There is never a situation where I do not bring a hellbore to a gun fight. I feel so bad for the opposition, I want to do what soccer legends Pelé did in his last game and switch sides in the middle of a match to even the odds.

The problem is what I become when I lie in wait. I starve for the chance to swing the sledgehammer down on the anthill. I want to do it. I want to sneer, to be cynical, to name-call. I want negative energy, just for a little while.

In that same amount of time, I could have prompted a movie for my forthcoming musical release on Instagram. I am my work. The trolls hide theirs. My name is in plain sight on my pages. They bring you here to markvolpe.com, which, I can boast, is now the Mark Volpe on the front page of a Google search just below the Mark Volpe of the Boston Symphony.

So, sheepishly, I bow my head and learn the lesson that I must learn continuously: speak here only , on my page, and nowhere else. Make proclamations here where I control the horizontal and I control the vertical.

I used to have a Mount Rushmore of the Soul. Now there’s only me.

If you enjoy my posts, know more are forthcoming. The work waits. I’m alive at last, and I’m full of joy.