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What I would have written

dcurt.is

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Re: What I would have written

#21

Post by smacktoward »

I tend to agree with this. So much so that I made a more in-depth version of the same argument on my own blog earlier this year: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/

I think the biggest contributor to the feelings Dustin is talking about is the way Twitter's design puts scorekeeping mechanisms front and center. Follower count is a scorekeeping mechanism -- if I have more followers than you, I'm "better" at Twitter than you are. Retweets are a scorekeeping mechanism -- if I get retweeted a lot, I'm better than you are. And so forth. Scorekeeping mechanisms are problematic because when you make them public, put them right up in the user's face, they turn the application into a video game. People see a connection between some actions and an increase in their "score," and that drives them to repeat the same behaviors.

Which is sort of what Dustin's getting at with the comparison to addiction, I think; Twitter is addictive in the same way that, say, Farmville is addictive. It's a Skinner box (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber) rather than a medium designed to facilitate discussion.

Re: What I would have written

#22

Post by kylehardgrave »

"And yet I see no solution to this problem. I will forever be a slave to 140-characters..."

I'm having a hard time sympathizing with this.

It's not Twitter that "instantly takes complex ideas out of my brain, over-simplifies them, and ships them off to random people." It's ME. Twitter is just a medium — the solution is to care about those complex thoughts enough to see them through.

Not to say that the instant gratification of tweeting does not exist, or is easy to fight — it's a struggle, and something to be mindful of. But the battle is already lost when, as this article does, you shift all the blame to the service instead of looking inward.

Re: What I would have written

#23

Post by tripngroove »

John Mayer speaking at Berklee College of Music had this to say on the subject:

> “The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You’re coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn’t have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.”

http://www.berklee-blogs.com/2011/07/john-mayer-2011-clinic-...

Re: What I would have written

#24

Post by breadbox »

I've stopped cooking for myself because TV dinners are so easy. But most TV dinners aren't great. But because they're so convenient, they have killed my desire to cook. And yet I see no solution to this problem."

Keep looking.

Re: What I would have written

#25

Post by philwelch »

beambot wrote: post #14
bigiain wrote: post #7

'and every fucking thing I think about, I also think, “How could I fit that into a tweet that lots of people would favorite or retweet?”' That, as I see it, is the problem – not twitter or 140char limits or any of the other stuff Dustin raises, it's the desire for external validation (and I can't help but imagine him furiously clicking reload on his own blog post to see how fast his Kudos score is climbing…) My takea…

Picasso also made quick napkin sketchings for passersby. So yeah, I could imagine him painting "triffles for immediate social media validation"... he probably would've enjoyed the exposure. But that didn't prevent him from undertaking more meaningful / involved endeavors too.

Did he, though? I always took that story as a fictional parable and not an account of something he ever habitually did.

Re: What I would have written

#26

Post by ritchiea »

bigiain wrote: post #7

'and every fucking thing I think about, I also think, “How could I fit that into a tweet that lots of people would favorite or retweet?”' That, as I see it, is the problem – not twitter or 140char limits or any of the other stuff Dustin raises, it's the desire for external validation (and I can't help but imagine him furiously clicking reload on his own blog post to see how fast his Kudos score is climbing…) My takea…

I believe generally if a medium exists to communicate with others creative people will try to maximize how they can succeed with that medium. The unfortunate part of this is Twitter is both very popular thus potentially a way to reach a ton of people and also the bare minimum for any reasonable communication. Doubly unfortunate is that the mainstream media already oversimplifies, so while I suspect many people wish to present an alternative to how the mainstream media communicates we don't yet have a pervasive technical tool well suited for that.

Re: What I would have written

#27

Post by waterlesscloud »

sengstrom wrote: post #2

I don't do twitter, but I have wondered what it would be to write or read a longer work composed within the limits of 140 character chunks - parceled out over time. It is not so much the size limitation on tweets as it is the disconnect between them that causes the dissolution of bigger ideas.

Trasnmedia writer Jay Bushman did a story via tweets called "The Good Captain", a sci fi take on a Melville story.

He rebroadcast it last year, but the original was in 2007 when Twitter was new and no one knew what it was going to be good for. So he experimented.

I followed it at the time and had the tweets sent to my phone as they came in. It was an interesting way to experience a story. Because it was spread out over time, I found myself keeping the context in my head as a low level background process.

There's probably a very interesting way or two to use that phenomenon.

https://twitter.com/goodcaptain

Re: What I would have written

#29

Post by [deleted] »

smacktoward wrote: post #20
snowwrestler wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked what comedian Louis CK had to say on this subject recently: http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell-phone My experience is that writing long, insightful pieces of prose is just hard, miserable work. People do it because they feel compelled to, not because it's a fun way to relax. So it's easy to procrastinate or avoid it, especially if there aren't any external demands or deadlines to meet.

I dunno, it's fun for me -- I find writing a long essay to be contemplative, meditative. It requires you to challenge your own thinking, which is both interesting and a little bit scary. But I'm willing to believe I'm an outlier in this regard.

[deleted]

Re: What I would have written

#30

Post by MysticFear »

smacktoward wrote: post #20
snowwrestler wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked what comedian Louis CK had to say on this subject recently: http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell-phone My experience is that writing long, insightful pieces of prose is just hard, miserable work. People do it because they feel compelled to, not because it's a fun way to relax. So it's easy to procrastinate or avoid it, especially if there aren't any external demands or deadlines to meet.

I dunno, it's fun for me -- I find writing a long essay to be contemplative, meditative. It requires you to challenge your own thinking, which is both interesting and a little bit scary. But I'm willing to believe I'm an outlier in this regard.

I dunno its fun. I find writn a long essay to be zen. It req you to challnge ur own thinkn, is both interestn and lil bit scary #ImAnOutlier

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