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Some people used to feel this way about IRC. I'm afraid the reality is probably that you just don't have the motivation to figure it out, for whatever reason.

by theoh 7y ago

Some people used to feel this way about IRC. I'm afraid the reality is probably that you just don't have the motivation to figure it out, for whatever reason. No mass-market product like Twitter could succeed if it was as confusing as you say it is. There's also the fact that a subset of computer programmer types have low tolerance for all sorts of "noisy" things that the average person doesn't have a problem with.

fjsolwmv 7y ago
IRC is also terrible for conversations.
- fivre 7y ago
  IRC is fine for conversations, though it's a different model of conversation than many mediums. All comments from different threads of conversation are intermixed, and you must separate them out mentally. This is very different from threaded models, but it's something that can be adapted to easily enough, same as how most people can talk within a group in a noisy bar, where there are multiple surrounding intelligible conversations. Like in a bar, it's easy to jump into another adjacent conversation spontaneously.
  - Twisell 7y ago
    More important IRC don’t enable to browse history as far as I known. Meanwhile tweet can persist enabling asynchronous conversation, so it’s more like a very lightweight forum than IRC. Edit: But the tree structure for reply is actually more similar to a HN thread with a less visible structure.
- ramblerman 7y ago
  It isn't but solely because IRC channels are of a reasonable size, and have some form of moderation. If you wanted to chat in a channel with 1000s of people (like twitter), the IRC model would be untenable.
rjf72 7y ago
I'd separate use cases. If you want to talk to/about yourself or if you just want to rant at somebody, post memes, etc then Twitter is easy and natural to use. If you want to have meaningful nuanced conversation, Twitter is useless. So you end up with a dichotomy where for some people Twitter is a fine fit and for others it's completely unusable. Both are correct.
- theoh 7y ago
  I'm actually a Twitter user, and I think this is a very jaundiced opinion. I have a lot of different interests and following people on Twitter is a very good grapevine system. Math twitter is a good place, for example. A lot of people are very enthusiastic about how it has enriched their mathematical diet. There are many good people on Twitter who use it for serious sharing of ideas in other fields as well. In general, it's a good way for people to share thoughts and links to a diverse audience. Liking Twitter isn't a sign of foolishness. Among the social networks, it's not as gross and corporate as FB, or as superficial as Instagram. Your dismissal of the reasons why people might like Twitter, the implicit claim that it's useless for sophisticated people like yourself, and the apparent desire to impose black and white dichotomies on the world risks making you into a candidate for the category of "just wanting to rant at somebody". We know that HN has its own serious cultural problems, after all.

by theoh 7y ago

fjsolwmv 7y ago

IRC is also terrible for conversations.

fivre 7y ago
IRC is fine for conversations, though it's a different model of conversation than many mediums. All comments from different threads of conversation are intermixed, and you must separate them out mentally. This is very different from threaded models, but it's something that can be adapted to easily enough, same as how most people can talk within a group in a noisy bar, where there are multiple surrounding intelligible conversations. Like in a bar, it's easy to jump into another adjacent conversation spontaneously.
- Twisell 7y ago
  More important IRC don’t enable to browse history as far as I known. Meanwhile tweet can persist enabling asynchronous conversation, so it’s more like a very lightweight forum than IRC. Edit: But the tree structure for reply is actually more similar to a HN thread with a less visible structure.
ramblerman 7y ago
It isn't but solely because IRC channels are of a reasonable size, and have some form of moderation. If you wanted to chat in a channel with 1000s of people (like twitter), the IRC model would be untenable.

rjf72 7y ago

I'd separate use cases. If you want to talk to/about yourself or if you just want to rant at somebody, post memes, etc then Twitter is easy and natural to use. If you want to have meaningful nuanced conversation, Twitter is useless. So you end up with a dichotomy where for some people Twitter is a fine fit and for others it's completely unusable. Both are correct.

theoh 7y ago
I'm actually a Twitter user, and I think this is a very jaundiced opinion. I have a lot of different interests and following people on Twitter is a very good grapevine system. Math twitter is a good place, for example. A lot of people are very enthusiastic about how it has enriched their mathematical diet. There are many good people on Twitter who use it for serious sharing of ideas in other fields as well. In general, it's a good way for people to share thoughts and links to a diverse audience. Liking Twitter isn't a sign of foolishness. Among the social networks, it's not as gross and corporate as FB, or as superficial as Instagram. Your dismissal of the reasons why people might like Twitter, the implicit claim that it's useless for sophisticated people like yourself, and the apparent desire to impose black and white dichotomies on the world risks making you into a candidate for the category of "just wanting to rant at somebody". We know that HN has its own serious cultural problems, after all.