as it turns out short form stream of conscious rambling was sometimes funny sometimes interesting even sometimes pivotal as a communications tool in countries experiencing civil unrest / injustice. but in its current stage and the state of all social media at this point one wonders why anyone pretends twitter is what it was a decade ago. it just isn't, it could also disappear tomorrow and things probably might even get a little better for the world given how much of a vehicle it is to amplify division.
i remember like i dunno 5-6 years ago when the people in my life started to wean themselves off twitter and i smoked a lot of cope to justify why i was still on it. can't even remember when i stopped using it but again... nothing of value was lost. feels like a fever dream i always thought i had to be tuned the hell in theres just no way that's good for anyone's brain.
instagram/facebook over my 20s left some real mental scars though im still trying to sort what the f those apps did to me and to culture at large. i quit instagram like 3 years ago, the classic millenial exploration of pruning your life of shite things to lower the anxiety. the scars i am still stuck with, and mind you i literally don't have these apps anymore:
- i still feel this soft pressure that anything i do doesn't matter unless there is a witness (a post, a story, etc). that is insane. it's been three years and i can still feel that what the hell? there's just no way the guy from 100 years ago who trainhopped around the country ever experienced that kind of pressure. it literally messed my brain up and i have no idea how to fix it for me at least the feeling hasn't gone away
- when you're on the other side it feels like you're just sitting outside of the rest of the worlds culture at this point. it can actually challenge why you left it in the first place and make you consider sacrificing your own well being just to not feel like you're not an outsider from another planet
i never did the tiktok thing so i dunno what that's like. at least leaving twitter felt like shutting a book that kinda sucked and you don't really ever think about it again
Twitter in its design has never been a platform for discussion, but for shouting into the void. And that seems to have empowered people to voice their most awful opinions because they don't see much pushback
Short messages bias toward simple slogans and memes devoid of context or nuance. It leads to “context collapse” in the discourse and the worst kind of echo chamber effects. You can’t ask for a better medium to spread rumor and disinformation.
Then, to supercharge its badness, it sorts by “engagement” which promotes the dumbest or most triggering stuff.
Think of the last point this way: two people walk past you. One says “hi.” The other strips and smears themselves with peanut butter and starts clucking like a chicken and saluting Hitler. Which of these two people maximizes engagement?
The peanut butter smeared clucking Nazi is now President. The opinions that dominate discourse everywhere are now the opinions of those types of people.
Social media is collective brain poison. Bluesky and Mastodon might be slightly less bad on the “maximizing engagement” part but they still cause the context collapse and echo chamber effects. The “microblogging” format is inherently toxic and irredeemable.
Microblogging has always felt so strange to me, I could never get into it. Why would I want to hear dozens of different short-form opinions from people? Maybe it's the 'tism, but that sounds so anxiety inducing & overwhelming.
When your follower/following count is small and you're getting to know people and build a community of people you otherwise wouldn't meet IRL, it can be a great thing. When you start getting inundated with too much information when you have 10K + followers, it can be overwhelming and you lose the signal within the noise and find that it may start affecting other parts of life. I suppose each person is different, but that burned me out and made me uninterested and I burned it all down. I found I was losing sleep checking my phone and getting unusually addicted to stupid things.
I opened it again after many years and frankly i'm seeing better content than i find on other social media platforms.
For example, instagram is clearly trying to understand what political side i lean on and pushes me that kind of content. I have to be very careful what kind of stuff i like otherwise my feed gets very polluted with political content rather than with interesting tech stuff and cats videos.
On the other hand, X/Twitter is routinely serving me better and more interesting technical content.
as it turns out short form stream of conscious rambling was sometimes funny sometimes interesting even sometimes pivotal as a communications tool in countries experiencing civil unrest / injustice. but in its current stage and the state of all social media at this point one wonders why anyone pretends twitter is what it was a decade ago. it just isn't, it could also disappear tomorrow and things probably might even get a little better for the world given how much of a vehicle it is to amplify division. i remember like i dunno 5-6 years ago when the people in my life started to wean themselves off twitter and i smoked a lot of cope to justify why i was still on it. can't even remember when i stopped using it but again... nothing of value was lost. feels like a fever dream i always thought i had to be tuned the hell in theres just no way that's good for anyone's brain.
instagram/facebook over my 20s left some real mental scars though im still trying to sort what the f those apps did to me and to culture at large. i quit instagram like 3 years ago, the classic millenial exploration of pruning your life of shite things to lower the anxiety. the scars i am still stuck with, and mind you i literally don't have these apps anymore:
- i still feel this soft pressure that anything i do doesn't matter unless there is a witness (a post, a story, etc). that is insane. it's been three years and i can still feel that what the hell? there's just no way the guy from 100 years ago who trainhopped around the country ever experienced that kind of pressure. it literally messed my brain up and i have no idea how to fix it for me at least the feeling hasn't gone away
- when you're on the other side it feels like you're just sitting outside of the rest of the worlds culture at this point. it can actually challenge why you left it in the first place and make you consider sacrificing your own well being just to not feel like you're not an outsider from another planet
i never did the tiktok thing so i dunno what that's like. at least leaving twitter felt like shutting a book that kinda sucked and you don't really ever think about it again
Twitter in its design has never been a platform for discussion, but for shouting into the void. And that seems to have empowered people to voice their most awful opinions because they don't see much pushback
It’s worse than that.
Short messages bias toward simple slogans and memes devoid of context or nuance. It leads to “context collapse” in the discourse and the worst kind of echo chamber effects. You can’t ask for a better medium to spread rumor and disinformation.
Then, to supercharge its badness, it sorts by “engagement” which promotes the dumbest or most triggering stuff.
Think of the last point this way: two people walk past you. One says “hi.” The other strips and smears themselves with peanut butter and starts clucking like a chicken and saluting Hitler. Which of these two people maximizes engagement?
The peanut butter smeared clucking Nazi is now President. The opinions that dominate discourse everywhere are now the opinions of those types of people.
Social media is collective brain poison. Bluesky and Mastodon might be slightly less bad on the “maximizing engagement” part but they still cause the context collapse and echo chamber effects. The “microblogging” format is inherently toxic and irredeemable.
I'm even cooler. I never used it.
Also, I don't watch TV and only smoke menthols. I mean vape. Or whatever.
People thought twitter was pretty cool at SxSW in 2007, I didn't go to Austin that time but heard about it plenty.
Been waiting ever since to see if it would become worthwile for me, or even stand the test of time.
X marks the spot where it seemed to achieve arrested development, so not holding my breath.
edit: have a corrective upvote while I'm at it :)
I’ve never used any microblogging platform and feel like I’ve never missed out. :)
Microblogging has always felt so strange to me, I could never get into it. Why would I want to hear dozens of different short-form opinions from people? Maybe it's the 'tism, but that sounds so anxiety inducing & overwhelming.
When your follower/following count is small and you're getting to know people and build a community of people you otherwise wouldn't meet IRL, it can be a great thing. When you start getting inundated with too much information when you have 10K + followers, it can be overwhelming and you lose the signal within the noise and find that it may start affecting other parts of life. I suppose each person is different, but that burned me out and made me uninterested and I burned it all down. I found I was losing sleep checking my phone and getting unusually addicted to stupid things.
Twitter was best when I followed comedians, record labels and venues.
(And I should note I left in 2017 when even the funny people couldn’t get a grip on what was happening online)
This is what short form posting was meant for. Jokes and quips from witty people and announcements for things I care about.
That Twitter became a primary source of news for anyone is a major indicator of the decline of civilization
politics and hack takes abound, but there were some legitimately funny people on twitter (some of whom've migrated to other platforms).
mostly bad, though.
Don't know why yer downvoted because this is for real and winning at life.
Im so cool that the only social network I use is hacker News and I don't even use that - I use hckrnews.com!
I opened it again after many years and frankly i'm seeing better content than i find on other social media platforms.
For example, instagram is clearly trying to understand what political side i lean on and pushes me that kind of content. I have to be very careful what kind of stuff i like otherwise my feed gets very polluted with political content rather than with interesting tech stuff and cats videos.
On the other hand, X/Twitter is routinely serving me better and more interesting technical content.
I'm the opposite. Ignored it for so long, and had only signed up post-acquistion.
Why would you do that to yourself?