Twitter is annoying. I signed up a couple years ago to follow some local stuff's news, mostly events. Thus I followed 8-9 accounts that initially were of my interest, and started refreshing and reading my feed. All I got was the same 3-4 posts repeated annoyingly often, so that I had to fish for new things that sink below stuff reposted almost hourly since months. I though, well, maybe it's these accounts that I follow that don't know what to do, and started looking around. What I found is that there are 3 prominent Twitter stereotypes: (i) the reposter, which repeatedly posts the same thing and retweets anybody who mention them, (ii) the dumper, like news sites etc., which just vomit tweets at you one every other minute, and (iii) the spartan which speaks in semi-cryptic punchlines. Given the platform has no spam filtering or any way to indicate whether a post is seen or not, it's byzantine task to extract information from what you get served in your feed.
Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
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Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
#22Well the fundamental chosen limitations of the service seem to make it a bad choice for detailed technical arguments. But ultimately social networks are just about who is there. We talk about technical topics on twitter not because it's the right forum, but because the people we want to talk to are there.
Discussing anything of substance on a social media is a bad idea. These sites incentivise short arguments. Twitter very forcefully. Facebook implicitly with its "See more" links, for when comments get long.
But it's also a result of the reactionary culture of those sites. People want to be offended. They think that because the comment is on the internet, that it's final, and intended as is. But it rarely is.
Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
#23Tech design choices can have profound social impact. This is just a personal theory, but I suspect Twitter's choices have done huge damage to Western Civilization, by forcing, as a medium, a very short 'soundbite' structure onto debate. (Even more so than the media which gave us the term 'soundbite' ever did!) So that sounds like a very overblown assertion, right? But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and a…
Consider an alternate perspective: There were other platforms that opted for a longer format. Yet Twitter became popular. Perhaps the reality is that, had Twitter opted for a longer format, another platform would have taken its place. Twitter may not be the cause of societal aversion to meaningful, dense discourse, but a symptom.
I think this is a much stronger historical argument. Twitter came out in 2006, the soundbite culture was a big topic definitely before 2006 (Jon Stewart, for one, had been campaigning against it for years by that point)
Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
#24Tech design choices can have profound social impact. This is just a personal theory, but I suspect Twitter's choices have done huge damage to Western Civilization, by forcing, as a medium, a very short 'soundbite' structure onto debate. (Even more so than the media which gave us the term 'soundbite' ever did!) So that sounds like a very overblown assertion, right? But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and a…
> But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and arguably he is the sort of President a platform like Twitter most directly enables. He gets direct unchallenged access to a mass medium
This is actually not true. Many of Trump's claims are challenged on Twitter and outside of Twitter. Maybe you don't like that he can directly talk to the people rather than twist his words to suit your narrative before heading it over to the masses
Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
#25Well the fundamental chosen limitations of the service seem to make it a bad choice for detailed technical arguments. But ultimately social networks are just about who is there. We talk about technical topics on twitter not because it's the right forum, but because the people we want to talk to are there.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. This is also what makes "social networks" so frustrating to technical people: it's not about your idea or even its execution. Rather, it's about how many other apes you've groomed in the past, to the point they'll back you up ("retweet") no matter how stupid your argument or insipid your tweet. The politics of it, tribalism. A 140 character limit doesn't help of course :-)…
Well...yes to what you're saying. But there aren't neat lines between our professional technical lives and our personal ones, in particular because we spend a lot of time hanging out with people who share our interests.
Social media is designed for friends, not technical discussion, it's just that human relationships of all kinds are messy and there are no clear lines. So one bleeds over into the other, this can be expected. I don't think that's social media's fault or the people, just a predictable consequence of "how the people be"
Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it Twitter's choices, or society's choice to use Twitter? i.e. do you think Twitter would have reached the status of presidential communication platform had it not made this choice?
Twitter did what was good for Twitter - becoming fun, addictive and compelling to use. People made a choice to use that compelling product. These choices worked out well for Twitter, but according to the GP, not well for the users, who unknowingly hurt their society.
Thank you for the concise summary of GP's post. I think tthe post you're responding to is trying to reframe the point with a question though: are you sure it's actually bad for society? maybe this is how our society communicates and twitter was just an expression of that.
In other worse, it's less that twitter influenced society, and more that society was waiting for the medium to communicate the way it wants.
Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
#27Tech design choices can have profound social impact. This is just a personal theory, but I suspect Twitter's choices have done huge damage to Western Civilization, by forcing, as a medium, a very short 'soundbite' structure onto debate. (Even more so than the media which gave us the term 'soundbite' ever did!) So that sounds like a very overblown assertion, right? But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and a…
You might find Elizabeth Eisenstein's work of interest: The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
I think we might see "Twitter as an Agent of Change" from a future historian. If we have future historians.
Oh, here it is, from 2013: https://earlyamericanists.com/2013/04/29/twitter-as-an-agent...
Eisenstein:
Book 1979: http://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of-...
Preliminary article, 1968: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1877720
Bio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Eisenstein
Obit: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/books/elizabeth-eisenstei...
Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter did what was good for Twitter - becoming fun, addictive and compelling to use. People made a choice to use that compelling product. These choices worked out well for Twitter, but according to the GP, not well for the users, who unknowingly hurt their society.
Thank you for the concise summary of GP's post. I think tthe post you're responding to is trying to reframe the point with a question though: are you sure it's actually bad for society? maybe this is how our society communicates and twitter was just an expression of that. In other worse, it's less that twitter influenced society, and more that society was waiting for the medium to communicate the way it wants.
You might just be 100% correct. I would still prefer the de facto dominating social platforms to enable more meaningful discussions and not promote the sensationalist statements format of "communication" that Twitter offers.
Society definitely responds to media influence. Sadly this is exploited in the wrong direction and rarely if ever for the society's benefit (mostly education).
Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
#29My biggest regret is arguing with people on Twitter. It is not productive. Even less so than arguing on any other forum.
Re: Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
#30If you're the kind of person who's comfortable writing texts of two paragraphs or more, you should completely avoid writing on Twitter, period. This will only lead to frustration and interaction with people who don't value the same level of quality writing as you do.
Absolutely. I've drawn my conclusions several years ago and stopped being active on Twitter, and stopped trying to look for meaningful material on it.
The painful truth is that many people realize this but they agonize over the fact that the people they want to talk with can only be found on Twitter. Network effect + tribalism = today's sad reality.