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The End of Big Twitter

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Re: The End of Big Twitter

#31

Post by adventured »

I'm not a heavy user of Twitter, although I've been a member since 2008. Mostly I check in a couple times per week with a few people that matter to me. The first time I noticed just how bad the 'people just misunderstand' effect now is, I was observing Richard Dawkins argue on his Twitter about simple logic concepts, and the people that were arguing against him could not grasp even rudimentary concepts of logic. It was terrible to observe.

Or another example: I randomly ran across Dax Shepard making a point about sugar consumption and the rise of diabetes ( https://twitter.com/daxshepard1/status/498145203639685120 ). Many replies were pointing out that type 1 diabetes isn't acquired from a sugar heavy diet (which was blatantly not his point). Type 2 diabetes is over 95% of diabetes cases in America, and that's obviously what he meant. Could the audience be that stupid?

I suppose it's the MySpace'ification of Twitter; that point where mass-appeal or distribution has been reached. I don't think I've seen any mega-sized, public service that this hasn't happened to (it's a non-stop complaint on Reddit for example).

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#32

Post by bphogan »

In a completely unrelated matter, I liked the Dave Matthews Band before they were cool.

Seriously though, the revelation that the "unwashed masses" now dominate a platform is pretty much commonplace. Twitter has, for me, become a news stream and very little more.

I did an experiment where I recorded and released a song a day, and nobody really noticed; I promoted via social media and all that, but really, there's so much noise, so much of a firehose, that unless you are watching the stream when something posts, you're going to miss it.

It's neat in a way, but it's also, exactly as the author says, no longer the intimate gather place.

Ah well, back to IRC then. :)

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#33

Post by dang »

mtalantikite wrote: post #30
transpy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see how (or if) Quora or HN follow that path.

Well, HN used to be much more technical early on, so I'm sure some would argue it's already happened. Long gone are the days of waking up to a front page full of Erlang posts in an attempt to scare off the general public whenever there was press about HN. I think it's been accepted that HN is more just general interest about startups these days.

I don't think that HN is less technical than it used to be. It has always had mixed content. Perceptions of it are perennially mixed as well—someone was just asking me why there hasn't been much startup news on HN lately.

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#34

Post by ddw »

bphogan wrote: post #32

In a completely unrelated matter, I liked the Dave Matthews Band before they were cool. Seriously though, the revelation that the "unwashed masses" now dominate a platform is pretty much commonplace. Twitter has, for me, become a news stream and very little more. I did an experiment where I recorded and released a song a day, and nobody really noticed; I promoted via social media and all that, but really, there's so…

It's not just random people with egg icons though. I'm getting the sense too that people, even smart people doing interesting things, are taking the medium so seriously now that there's a lot of bickering.

It may be bigger then Twitter though as reaction time becomes smaller, so does the backlash.

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#35

Post by hnriot »

I only use twitter for its nlp signal, I have zero interest in actually posting or worst still, actually reading any of it. twitter is like youtube comments, without the video. But it's great for what the aggregate signal it contains.

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#36

Post by fineline »

I have never had a Twitter account, nor have I ever posted to Facebook (although I do have a page, so the press have a nice picture of me in case I'm kidnapped or something, as well as 50 or so "friends", although I have no idea who many of them are or where they came from). So I don't quite get what this guy is complaining about. How was posting to a privately owned (by someone else) but publicly broadcasted platform, designed to attract freely contributed content in order to build an advertising channel, ever supposed to be "intimate"?

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#37

Post by kordless »

liface wrote: post #21

Platform starts, intelligent, well-spoken early adopters sign on. Fast forward 7-8 years. Platform is overrun by normal people. Early adopters leave and move on to the next platform The cycle continues.

Where are we going again?

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#38

Post by void-star »

So... FWIW, I totally don't have these problems with twitter. It's probably because I only check my twitter feed and spout out a few tweets at a time once every two weeks or so and pretty much ignore it the rest of the time.

Full disclosure: I don't use any other social network besides twitter, either. It's because it's so non-committal that I can deal with twitter...

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#39

Post by A_COMPUTER »

Twitter is an optimal conduit for narcissism, trolling, harassment, mobbing, astroturfing, demagoguery, and manufacturing consent. The medium shapes the discourse, and Twitter encourages and amplifies bad behavior while inhibiting intelligent and thoughtful conversation. Even if it didn't architecturally push you toward this behavior the scale alone enables every bad behavior you would expect if you scaled a single IRC channel up to a billion people. There is no way to "fix" this. It is its nature.

It is a technology that exists because it makes a few people a ton of money and gives regular people a dopamine tweak along with heaps of suffering. It is the online equivalent of a crackhouse.

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#40

Post by XorNot »

fineline wrote: post #36

I have never had a Twitter account, nor have I ever posted to Facebook (although I do have a page, so the press have a nice picture of me in case I'm kidnapped or something, as well as 50 or so "friends", although I have no idea who many of them are or where they came from). So I don't quite get what this guy is complaining about. How was posting to a privately owned (by someone else) but publicly broadcasted platfor…

You should have a Twitter account. I have a Twitter account under my real name with a keyboard smash password, just to ensure no one else can take it. Same with Facebook.
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