Twitter

[clyde]

Ok. So my initial reasons for using Twitter in the first place was to be entertained and inspired by micro-celebrities whose thoughts entertain and inspire me. I have a few friends on Twitter, but our communication usually takes place on Facebook; I guess they are just following celebrities too.

But eventually, what happens is that someone I follow says something that I have an opinion about and I feel the need to state it, in an absurdly small quanity of characters. I totally understand the value of a character limit... when writing a headline. But Twitter's neglect of a place to allow long form after an inspiring phrase is incredibly frustrating to me. Everyday I see tweets like "[interesting thought] but I guess it's not a conversation to have on Twitter". No kidding, this template is prone to advertisement with no product. But it's initially SO accessible.

So then, let's talk about the cut-up piece that results from the inevitable attempts of in-depth discussion. What a fucking nightmare. I only see the portions of the conversations by the people I follow or who have been selectively promoted by them. The idea seems like a good one; remove the internet noise of 12 "lolz" for every complete thought. But in reality, what happens is that participants are responding to multiple people during a twittersion and all of those responses inform the ones you actually see. Let me diagram a bit:

Sasha says "Games suck because I hate jumping."

Bethany responds "Not all games require jumping, like most strategy-games"

Sasha responds (just to Bethany) "Do you have to drive? I hate driving."

Seung-jo responds (just to Sasha) "You don't jump in most driving-games, maybe you shoud try Blur."

Then Sasha responds "Lol."

In an attempt to have a conversation with multiple people, the form inherently forces it to splits into three conversations which unintentionally inform one another. Twitter is pretty much the worst. How did this become widely adopted? It's impossible to engage in a conversation after a thesis is stated publically.

I'll still use it and struggle with it, but I'll spend more time making compromises and misinterpreting than I will spend developing thought with others.

[Roderick]

The true function of Twitter is to make humorous posts in 140 characters, comment loosely on something or someone, and generally maintain weak social bonds with people. That's not a disparaging comment, by the way, it's actually pretty useful and important to do that. Also, #twitterchillers

[JonCole]

Now that Twitter has the weird new format for flowing reply chains via the dreaded blue line, I don't really know why there's not a less opaque way to manually identify that a certain Tweet is part of a certain chain. There's obvious technical stuff you'd have to figure out, like it shouldn't allow me to insert my voice into a conversation between two people I don't know unless they include me in the conversation.

 

Also, I'm still not really sure why usernames are included in the character limit. Seems to naturally limit how wide a conversation can get, for no discernable positive reason other than sticking to 140 characters no matter what.

 

Twitlonger kinda resolves this problem, I wish that they'd finally integrate this feature directly into Twitter (especially since Twitter seems happy to... "steal" the best features from third-party apps/plugins that tap its API).

 

The only upside of this thing is that it's actually encouraged me and a small group of close internet friends to carry on longer conversations via email. I don't really use email for anything but semi-permanent text messages nowadays, so it's nice to actually have a real conversation via this "old" email tech.

[clyde]

I'm sure that a lot of my frustrations with Twitter are the result of trying to interact with people whose work I'm familar with, but who are not familiar with me.

[SecretAsianMan]

A lot of things about Twitter annoy me, but I think the number one thing I hate is the use of hashtags.  I don't mind the concept of grouping together tweets about the same subject, but when the use of them became ironic or sarcastic, that's when it started to bother me.  Using hashtags as descriptors for a single tweet and nothing else annoys the hell out of me, especially when that hashtag has an actual non-ironic function.  Also hearing people actually say the phrase "hashtag ______" also drives me nuts but that's just because I think it's dumb.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I like twitter. It gives me a stream of interesting articles, funny jokes, news updates, and short observations/conversations about topics that can be discussed in the length limit.

[elmuerte]

I use 1-byte twitter. It does a sum of all the characters in a tweet (utf-8 code), does mod 93 + 33, and converts that to ascii.. that's what I read.

[tegan]

Patton Oswalt is the only celebrity to master the Twitter joke.

[jmbossy]

I feel very similarly about Facebook and all social media (wait- unless you count forums, which I guess are technically that as well). I don't feel any one posting on either site wants to converse as much as they want to have their thoughts heard. I'm not even trying to tear down Facebook/Twitter by saying that, it serves a purpose and one that I actually use. The internet is a big place, and seeing all of the people I care about's commentary all in one place is helpful in navigating it. I just don't expect to have conversations there, and I don't generally follow people who "keep up with their followers". 

 

 

Patton Oswalt is the only celebrity to master the Twitter joke.

 

absolutely perfect ^.^

[JonCole]

Pontwitficater.

 

That's certainly the worst portmanteau I've thought up today.

[Thrik]

Trying to have any kind of reply-based discussion on Twitter does get irritating quite quickly. Recently we had one going where like six of us were in on it, and by the time everyone's name had been included in the reply (@Guy1, @Guy2, @Guy3, etc) there was hardly any room to actually write anything. Not to mention that following the conversation can be troublesome, and depending on which 'reply' button people click on certain people who joined in later can get left out.

 

So yeah, that part is a bit of a mess. If you don't get involved with responding to tweets much I guess it's not going to be a concern. To my mind, it'd be better having a tweet being its own self-contained instance that people can leave threaded comments on — just like a blog post. But Twitter is such a huge thing with its own cultures and obsessives that I'm pretty sure it's staying how it is.

[Merus]

I have occasionally gotten involved in multi-way conversations that are infuriating because most of your limit is taken up by usernames.

 

BUT

 

I think the value of Twitter is specifically that it prohibits long-form discussion. On Twitter, you only have two choices: be witty, or be banal. Get to the point, or don't have a point. It focuses discussion wonderfully. I think a lot of the stress people have trying to overwhelm their partner with arguments is borne out of not having one really good argument in the first place. It is very difficult to bloviate on Twitter. It is also difficult to have a furious back-and-forth, which diffuses arguments before they can really get going (and an immediate, text-based medium populated mostly by strangers is a terrible place for an argument. You can't judge emotional meter at all.) It's easy enough to drive-by troll, but you have to be pretty up-front with your trolling and it's not like trolling isn't an epidemic everywhere.

 

I think it probably would have been better with 160 characters, though.

[miffy495]

Pontwitficater.

 

That's certainly the worst portmanteau I've thought up today.

 

On that note, my twitter account has devolved into where I post a pun that I made that I'm proud of. That is, if I haven't already forced said pun on my class (I made them play a game in science class today called "varia-ball" which included a lesson on control and manipulated variables).

[Merus]

Was that game Metroid themed?

[Bjorn]

Samath Aran has to fight the Mathroids by identifying prime numbers using her powered Varia suit and its morph ball ability, which one might call a powered Varia-ball...

You know what, I'm sorry...I'll let my self out.

[Ben X]

I think the value of Twitter is specifically that it prohibits long-form discussion. On Twitter, you only have two choices: be witty, or be banal. Get to the point, or don't have a point. It focuses discussion wonderfully. I think a lot of the stress people have trying to overwhelm their partner with arguments is borne out of not having one really good argument in the first place. It is very difficult to bloviate on Twitter. It is also difficult to have a furious back-and-forth, which diffuses arguments before they can really get going (and an immediate, text-based medium populated mostly by strangers is a terrible place for an argument. You can't judge emotional meter at all.) It's easy enough to drive-by troll, but you have to be pretty up-front with your trolling and it's not like trolling isn't an epidemic everywhere.

 

Absolutely agree. I was annoyed when they started introducing long tweets and the like, it ruins the whole concept. We already have blogs and forums for long-form statements or discussions. I'm often surprised how much I can cram into 140.

[clyde]

"The idea that you don't have a point if you can't type it in less than 140 is absurd IMO"

...is the just the type of thing people end up saying on Twitter before they are having three separate conversations about it while ignoring five others. The medium encourages curt opinions, not points. Points are the conclusions of arguments. Stating them without the actual argument leads to misunderstandings and sloganized concepts.

I can understand how Twitter's format could break down barriers for people who are intimidated by walls of text. But I think it inherently does so by destroying any chance of communicating complexity before the discussion falls into pieces.

I suppose this is only true for twitter-discussions of more that two participants though. I could see how short-form would encourage equality of contribution in dialogue between two people. Still, in my memories of debating with friends over coffee in diners, there comes a point in the banter where a soliloquy is necessary in order to illustrate one person's position before someone else diverts it with a trivial question. I was typically the joker with a bag of trivial questions.

[Henroid]

The true use of Twitter is to hijack stupid hashtags like:

 

#LiesObamaToldUs

 

Dropping pop-culture and nerdy references all over it, and eventually Andrew Ryan quotes, just to see how many people take to them unironically. I managed to get the account made with the hashtag name to follow me unironically. I feel like I demonstrated something.

[clyde]

Is it just me or are the sounds you get when you pull down to load more tweets (on the official iphone app) the sounds of a spider hissing and a cube being put into your inventory in Minecraft?

[clyde]

I'd love to have a respectful discussion about weaponized hashtags with y'all.

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/BL-SEB-80544