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> Did it? Yes. People such as Alexandra Erin or Flavia Dzodan regularly provide well-informed, structured and readable threads, to say nothing of all the scien

> Did it? Yes. People such as Alexandra Erin or Flavia Dzodan regularly provide well-informed, structured and readable threads, to say nothing of all the scientists active on Twitter. Shitposting accounts are only a part, large but rather boring, of the wider Twitter ecosystem. > I feel like it rather encouraged going for the shortest available arguments. Which tend to be the ones low on data, This is presumptuous. There is nothing stopping you from providing data and sources on Twitter. Threading exists and works (well, worked, they kinda broke it recently) fine. > and high on emotion This is not a bad thing. For non-trivial arguments, the emotional side is very important. But, also, "high on emotion" is not a universal thing about Twitter threads, nor is it absent in other mediums. The best one could say about, say, certain tech reddit-alikes, is that the emotion represented in them is largely repressed and masked.

int_19h 8y ago
> Yes. People such as Alexandra Erin or Flavia Dzodan regularly provide well-informed, structured and readable threads, to say nothing of all the scientists active on Twitter. Your claim that I disputed was that Twitter encourages such content. I'm not saying that it doesn't have any good stuff - but you need to compare it to other, more verbose mediums to make a claim that the brevity that Twitter rules impose actually result in more such content being published, and that its quality is better. The first thing that comes to my mind in this context is Usenet, and I don't think Twitter compares favorably to that. > This is presumptuous. There is nothing stopping you from providing data and sources on Twitter. This is observational. And of course there's nothing stopping you from it. But the medium is not optimized for it, and that discourages it in practice. Again, I'm not claiming that Twitter doesn't have data and sources - only that it has less than more verbose mediums.
- LaGrange 8y ago
  The, in my opinion false, assumption you seem to be making the entire time, is that the encouragement is consistent for both forms — that it works the same for all people, both content creators and consumers. But there's plenty of people who excel at expression on either long or short form forms. So I am _not_ claiming that articles or Usenet posts were universally bad — but a claim that they are somehow "better" than Twitter would be just as false. Especially in the case of Usenet. I mean, I don't know how rosy glasses you're wearing, but I do remember what it was like, and while not exactly 4Chan, it was often getting there.

int_19h 8y ago

> Yes. People such as Alexandra Erin or Flavia Dzodan regularly provide well-informed, structured and readable threads, to say nothing of all the scientists active on Twitter. Your claim that I disputed was that Twitter encourages such content. I'm not saying that it doesn't have any good stuff - but you need to compare it to other, more verbose mediums to make a claim that the brevity that Twitter rules impose actually result in more such content being published, and that its quality is better. The first thing that comes to my mind in this context is Usenet, and I don't think Twitter compares favorably to that. > This is presumptuous. There is nothing stopping you from providing data and sources on Twitter. This is observational. And of course there's nothing stopping you from it. But the medium is not optimized for it, and that discourages it in practice. Again, I'm not claiming that Twitter doesn't have data and sources - only that it has less than more verbose mediums.

LaGrange 8y ago
The, in my opinion false, assumption you seem to be making the entire time, is that the encouragement is consistent for both forms — that it works the same for all people, both content creators and consumers. But there's plenty of people who excel at expression on either long or short form forms. So I am _not_ claiming that articles or Usenet posts were universally bad — but a claim that they are somehow "better" than Twitter would be just as false. Especially in the case of Usenet. I mean, I don't know how rosy glasses you're wearing, but I do remember what it was like, and while not exactly 4Chan, it was often getting there.