If you live the twitter life, you ARE A TWIT
Quitting Twitter
151–160 of 292 posts
Re: Quitting Twitter
#152I joined Twitter in the spring of 2009 and immediately began grooming a set of programmers to follow. These were, in equal measure, interesting people I’ve worked with, famous open source developers, and random interesting folks who tweeted about programming. I really loved it. As a recluse who has no friends IRL, I found Twitter to be my one respite from extreme social isolation.
It all changed when Trump announced his candidacy for president. As a staunchly apolitical person, I found it painful to watch my corner of Twitter lose its mind. Formerly engaging and technically curious folks reverted to feverishly decrying each new political development and news story. Outrage became a badge of honor among techies.
I did what I’ve always done before: fell back on curation as a means of keeping order. At first I shunted specific individuals into a separate Twitter list. This worked for a while until it turned out that each visit to the “special” list caused me aggravation and disgust. After a few more attempts at re-shuffling my follows, I gave up and unfollowed everyone, renamed my account, and deleted the mobile app.
That was in late 2015. I haven’t looked back since then, although in the early weeks of my Twitter abstinence I found it difficult to keep away. But I persevered and never came back.
I believe I’m better off. I still have no IRL friends, and there isn’t a social platform on which I’m active. This may not be ideal, but it’s better than watching supposedly intelligent people descend into madness. I won’t have any part of that.
Re: Quitting Twitter
#153My approach to Twitter has been to aggressively unfollow anyone posting content that I don’t want to be consuming. That ranges from constantly dunking on every opportunity to people who simply tweet too many times per day. The best content and discussion comes from small groups of people with similar interests who aren’t using Twitter simply to fill time or to build their personal brand. Removing everyone else doesn’…
Doesn’t this by definition mean that you’re in a social media bubble with those who agree with you?
Sure but it's a bubble of comic book artists, people that like video games, comedians cracking jokes, etc.
Re: Quitting Twitter
#154Considering quitting all social media. Twitter - Quit, Facebook - Quit, Whatsapp - Quit, Reddit - quit, LinkedIn - Under consideration. Freetime++ Focus++ Adtracking--
I quit everything but Reddit (which I pretty much only lurk in, and only do hobby talk) and LinkedIn (until I strike it rich, I still gotta have a job). It's been excellent since I no longer waste my time being angry about things I can't change, or seeking attention or approval. Obviously some people can cope with the demands of social media more than others, but it didn't work for me, and I think, like me, a lot of people are putting themselves through unnecessary pain to stick to a platform which actually brings little or no value to themselves. In short, fuck social media.
Re: Quitting Twitter
#155quitting Twitter will improve your life, but here's the problem: it leaves it to the most radical. and why is that a problem? because there is a pipeline from Twitter into the real world, especially via journalists and politicians who live on there. what's the answer? I'd love to hear ideas! but I think either we need many, many more reasonable voices on Twitter (an uphill battle, given the platform rewards and optim…
Reasonable voices get downvoted. Social media rewards extremes.
Re: Quitting Twitter
#156My approach to Twitter has been to aggressively unfollow anyone posting content that I don’t want to be consuming. That ranges from constantly dunking on every opportunity to people who simply tweet too many times per day. The best content and discussion comes from small groups of people with similar interests who aren’t using Twitter simply to fill time or to build their personal brand. Removing everyone else doesn’…
Doesn’t this by definition mean that you’re in a social media bubble with those who agree with you?
I'm aware of the bad takes anyway, since they're pretty much unavoidable.
Re: Quitting Twitter
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Toxicity on twitter is huge but once you unfollow toxic users (or any user who tweets nonsense too often) things look much better. Tbh I don't use twitter to engage in conversations. I use it mostly to consume interesting content.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who behave really well and have really interesting things to say about tech , but for anything political, they just vent really hateful, angry things (or retweet the same). The Go community has a fair amount of this, sadly. It sucks to have to choose, but more importantly I think Twitter actually radicalizes people toward hate and divisiveness. I don't think these people were s…
I honestly think Twitter has managed to rewire our brains, with people being shocked/offended by things that 7 years ago wouldn't have turned heads. Twitter has recognised this, and feeds this effect to increase engagement. Also see Facebook.
I'm not sure where this leads but it can't be good.
Re: Quitting Twitter
#158Twitter was useful for following people in the tech field but otherwise I do not miss it. The constant 'gotcha' tweets and blue-checkmark posturing... ughhh, so awful.
Re: Quitting Twitter
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes it introduces you to new people though that are interesting to follow (usually because people in your network liked their post or something). I find this generally valuable. If you want to be extreme about it, you can put everyone in lists and then this won't happen. You can also use a third party client that doesn't do this. My main Twitter complaint is the ads. There are so many and they suck. I'd much ra…
> My main Twitter complaint is the ads. There are so many and they suck. There are no ads in third party clients such as Tweetbot.
When I was on Twitter I found the ads so distracting that I used the web version on my phone with Firefox and ublock origin. This did the job, just about if you can cope with the web client clumsiness and lag.
Re: Quitting Twitter
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who behave really well and have really interesting things to say about tech , but for anything political, they just vent really hateful, angry things (or retweet the same). The Go community has a fair amount of this, sadly. It sucks to have to choose, but more importantly I think Twitter actually radicalizes people toward hate and divisiveness. I don't think these people were s…
I honestly think Twitter has managed to rewire our brains, with people being shocked/offended by things that 7 years ago wouldn't have turned heads. Twitter has recognised this, and feeds this effect to increase engagement. Also see Facebook. I'm not sure where this leads but it can't be good.
Agreed. I can't help but think that outrage is an addictive substance that would make Phillip Morris green with envy.