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I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

martinboss.com

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

#101

Post by affectsk »

mrtksn wrote: post #91
kstenerud wrote: post #10

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…

The author himsel doesn't have any considerable following, the article is more like collection of thoughts and hypotheses. It's not that it's bad but IMHO shouldn't be considered authoritative. There's this phrase "medium is the message" and I think it holds very well with Twitter. The message is outrage. The message is, be angry and be afraid and be insecure or no one cares.

If you're there to go viral then sure, outrage can work - just like it does anywhere else.

But I'd argue most people aren't there to go viral or cause a ruckus. And in that case you can have a great time on Twitter with a relatively small following.

(Not to say I would mind having more followers, of course - but it's not the goal)

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

#102

Post by kinow »

zaphar wrote: post #7

I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…

That's pretty much how I use any social media. Unfollow/block/mute. Works on reddit too.

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

#104

Post by tom_ »

walleeee wrote: post #98
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I settled on a similar approach. I used to liberally follow all sorts of accounts that seemed even remotely relevant, but signal to noise was abysmal and there was way too much drama. Several times I was on the verge of quitting, even though Twitter was quite useful for promoting my own work and that of my students. But recently I decided to try a new approach and systematically unfollowed a lot of accounts. Now I st…

with 6 you miss some good accounts, anonymity is not always a bad thing

This is covered by rule 7.

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

#105

Post by affectsk »

maxsilver wrote: post #37
kstenerud wrote: post #10

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…

Twitter is the only major social network that I actually 'get'. Instagram is great, but it only works if you take good pictures. You have to be pretty, or a photographer. It's super great for that, but minimum effort needed per post is high, so engagement sort of has to be low. Reddit is great, but it's not really 'social' so much as it's a generic-access to monopolized forums. It feels like a catalog of phpBB forums…

That's exactly how I feel about it! Couldn't have put it better myself.

Posting on Facebook, LinkedIn or even Instagram feels like making a statement. I can't just throw a random thought or a picture in there, it feels out of place.

On the other hand, Twitter is a lot more casual. It works perfectly for stuff you wouldn't think twice about. Thoughts, jokes, ideas, pictures. Doesn't matter.

And yes, it's perfect for socializing. Little difference between tweets and replies means you can easily spend most of your time not posting anything and just replying to other people's content and get value out of it.

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

#107

Post by bachmeier »

munificent wrote: post #65
bachmeier wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish the technical people I follow on Twitter would leave the politics out, I follow them for their technical insights. I think this is a significant flaw in the design of Twitter. You should be able to follow a subset of someone else's tweets rather than the binary all/nothing we have now.

Honestly, it's a significant flaw in the design of humans. When interacting with a human, I did not sign up for them being a complete holistic personality with hopes, dreams, beliefs, history, etc. I just want direct access to some personally chosen subset of their brain. Why do I have to deal with their messy... ugh... peopleness ?

> Honestly, it's a significant flaw in the design of humans.

Yes. And they do wonderful things with technology these days that can help us get around those flaws.

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

#108

Post by rockinghigh »

meowface wrote: post #34
fluidcruft wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that the algorithmic feed just wants to firehose 99.9% sensationalist trending muck I don't want from people and topics I don't want to follow or read about on twitter.

For me the absolute worst of the worst is the "More Tweets" list under certain tweets. It's basically designed to be the most sensationalist, polarizing, "hot take"ist bullshit imaginable. I'm not sure I've ever read a single thing worth reading in that section. A rather meta example: scroll down to the "More Tweets" section under this recent Elon Musk tweet - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1525738556102164480 I…

These are tweets Twitter wants to hide because they are deemed toxic.

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

#110

Post by affectsk »

soneca wrote: 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…

Low-key yeah, I do want to figure out how to win, but I haven't gotten there yet.

Your way of "getting" it is perfectly fine, too - if that's what you want out of it. Right now I do enjoy reading people's personal stuff, but they have to be the people I care about at least to some extent.

So what I wanted out of Twitter was the ability to be heard, not just to listen. That's the part that I kinda figured out. Winning is a different story.

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