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I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

martinboss.com

151–160 of 228 posts

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a difference between the desktop and web experience because I don't see any "more tweets" section. If I scroll, I just get autoloading of more replies to the tweet.

Not sure whether you’re on desktop or mobile, but I only get “More Tweets” on the mobile website if I’m not signed in. Otherwise it’s as you describe, only replies.

That's funny because it's the exact opposite for me. I'm on desktop and I see it only when logged in. When not logged in, I only see replies.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only talk of "public forum" comes from people who are desperate to force others to listen to them. Occasionally, it's used by other people properly to refer to a space used by government for official purposes; I suspect much of the other use is dual purpose, that is, it intends to discredit the proper use as much as to advance a more overt purpose.

Twitter is of course completely unsuitable as means of official communication - just the word limit makes it terrible for the purpose. What it is good for is sending sound bites at each other. (For emergency communications SMS is better and sufficient.)

> Twitter is of course completely unsuitable as means of official communication

Whether or not you believe it is unsuitable for such purposes has no bearing on the fact that government has indeed used it for such purposes, and that this imposes legal requirements on the use of those government accounts as public fora that do not apply to Twitter generally.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#153

I still don't get it. Nothing in this article makes sense to me, either. Not to denigrate the author - I'm sure what he posted makes a ton of sense, just not to me. I made a twitter account shortly after it first started, made a few tweets, and then it languished and I think it's probably long deleted by now. Last year my wife made me another one because "you need it to promote your OSS stuff". Okay so I made a few t…

It's primarily about what you want out of it. The first few times I tried using Twitter to promote my stuff and failed miserably. If you're there purely for promotion you won't get far, and it's definitely not the best channel for that purpose. (Especially if it feels like a slog to you). If you're there to interact with like-minded people AND share something you're working on in the process, that's a different story…

I guess that's the thing in the end. There isn't anything I can see in it that looks valuable. I just don't get the appeal, and so every post I make and every post I read feels like "why exactly am I doing this anyway?"

For awhile I figured it was about "breaking through" after a long slog, but that doesn't appear to be the case either. But I suppose it's the same with all of these post-your-random-thoughts platforms.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#154
My rules for Twitter:

    * Maintain exactly one public tweet and one like
    * Delete all other tweets within 24..168 hours
    * Ensure that your # of followed == # of followers (this is for comedy, not metrics)
    * Never quote or re-tweet
    * Never reveal any personal or professional information
    * Have an entirely cryptic bio
    * Don't take it in the slightest bit seriously
    * Don't invest any mental energy whatsoever in ephemeral trash like social media
The only winning move is not to play.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#155
post #44

A more informative title could be ”I finally got how to win on Twitter” , because that’s what this person wanted. They wanted to “win”. That’s not what I want. I “got” Twitter from my first time using it. I wanted to follow a mix of diverse people around topics that interested me and be informed on new and old things about these topics. And I never minded reading personal stuff from those people. I actually enjoyed t…

[deleted]

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#156
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and the cool part is you don't need a lot to start feeling relevant. At least I didn't. A few weeks of consistently showing up and interacting with the same people made them start recognizing me, and that was enough to stop feeling like I'm just tweeting into the void here. Now a few months and a few hundred followers later I'm finally at a point where I can simply ask "my" Twitter for feedback or share a though…

> Yep, and the cool part is you don't need a lot to start feeling relevant. "Being relevant" isn't really my goal on Twitter. Chatting to people is. Sometimes I get to learn stuff. It's supposed to be social .

That's pretty much what I mean by "being relevant", just my way of putting it.

Socializing and learning stuff, but in a way that doesn't feel like I'm shouting into the void.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#158
i'd be really curious how the author approaches DMs. microblogging didn't make sense to me until i realized that the timeline can just be used as an approach to easily create surface-level connections, with the more fulfilling interactions happening in DMs (or more often, Matrix chatrooms, since i use ActivityPub instead of Twitter and in my corner Matrix is ubiquitous).

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#159
post #103

I don't know if you really "get" twitter until you've had a throw-away tweet from 7 years ago dredged up and used to try and destroy you.

The best I've had is being suspended for a 7 year old "kill all boomers" tweet :(

Ha! I got that too!

I tweeted the classic joke "old people should be killed at birth", which made sense in context. Got a few likes in the moment. 4 months later, account suspended, had to delete the tweet to get it back.

I'm still puzzled by what happened.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#160

It's an RSS feed for people.

It used to be literally this.

> If you'd like to keep up with Twitter updates without logging in, try subscribing to Twitter via rss feed. […] Find an rss feed for a Twitter page in the sidebar of any public profile page

https://web.archive.org/web/20110228080118/http://support.tw...

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