10 ms·

As a former social media analyst, I'm quitting Twitter

113 points by madrox 6y ago

part1of2 6y ago
I was just thinking about that too this AM while working on my car. No one is on twitter to have a conversation, it’s a room full of screaming people. I wouldn’t walk into that room physically, so why am I walking into virtually? It’s time to quit
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  "No one is on twitter to have a conversation, it’s a room full of screaming people." It's not a room, but a city. You've clearly been spending time in a bad part of town. Ruthlessly curating lists of people/accounts worth following will transform your experience.
  - FooHentai 6y ago
    Twitter is certainly more palatable with a ruthlessly curated feed. In fact I think it's a mandatory action or you'll simply stop engaging with the platform. So anyone who's an ongoing twitter user is guaranteed to have a highly filtered view of what's posted. So in the end the tailoring capability makes itself an obligation, which leads to users floating in their own opinions and information bubble, leads to ... interesting ... outcomes when the real world comes knocking. This is markedly different to how it has been before with specialist forums etc. There, while there was coalescence around particular topics, the range of opinions and personalities participating was otherwise quite open and the ability to filter was limited (or rather, elective in a way that twitter feed curation is not). There was certainly some self-selection at play but it's intensified massively with the shift in dynamic. Facebook has the same issue as twitter of course and I suspect many other platforms as well - One mitigating approach is to try and keep conflicting views on your feed but it quickly becomes so tiresome that your engagement with the platform as a whole drops. I'm not sure there's a good approach other than to go full wargames.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    Even most "good" people/accounts aren't really having a conversation. Tweets are almost always very bold statements with little nuance.
    - chrisweekly 6y ago
      Sure, but that's true IRL too -- and is mostly moot if you enjoy scanning your highly-curated lists of Twitter handles to see what certain smart and/or interesting people have to say.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    Ruthlessly curating lists of people/accounts worth following will transform your experience. But who has time for that? The OP said he was thinking about it while working on his car. A real life thing that I expect is a lot more satisfying than staring at phosphor being "ruthless" to strangers.
    - chrisweekly 6y ago
      > "who has time for that?" Given how many hours of daily television are consumed by your average 1st-world person, just about everyone.
- tayo42 6y ago
  The format and discoverability are the biggest problem. Any conversation is hidden away in accounts tweets. If you don't know the specific account then you won't know what's being talked about. There's also no community unless your already famous. It's essentially anonymous. Reddit I think has the potential for the best discussion platform. The people are the biggest problem, and upvotes are a good idea, but doesn't seem to work in practice
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    IMO discoverability is an anti feature. Having random people drop in constantly means you can never have a real community or users that are even familiar with the rules. I love things like IM groups/discord servers because they are somewhat hidden and hard to find. You get invited by a friend or see a link somewhere and join and when you do join you tend to stick around for a while.
- jcims 6y ago
  It would be funny to get a bunch of people from Twitter that have been shouting at each other together into a room and ask them to re-enact their 'conversation' in person.
  - TravHatesMe 6y ago
    That would make for an interesting youtube video! Realistically you could get actors to read the lines. Although the text that someone wrote could be orally said in many different ways; it might be challenging to accurately portray the conversation.
    - viraptor 6y ago
      It's been done for YouTube comments before. There's a series about it: https://youtu.be/MxrWuE5qC5c https://youtu.be/MxrWuE5qC5c
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    people from Twitter that have been shouting at each other together into a room and ask them to re-enact their 'conversation' in person Mike Tyson says: “Social media made you all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Twitter's UI is hostile to conversation. It took me ages to figure out how to read replies (vs. make a reply myself) and on mobile navigating around different replies is horrible, even worse than Reddit's attempt to make this hard.
throwaway7281 6y ago
The most strong signal I get is that substack is putting in a lot of money seemingly to bootstrap content.
im3w1l 6y ago
> The rise of fake news, the alt-right, and other extreme social factions coincide with the rise of viral platforms for that reason. Reality check: Twitter didn't cause the Uighur situation.
TheChaplain 6y ago
I think what most fail on when it comes to Twitter, is following the right people. Personally I follow a bunch of vendors of products I like, a whole ring of C++ and developers, as well as a few game developers. So I have a quite pleasant and informative Twitter experience because I am selective.
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  Same experience here. If you exclusively follow smart, interesting people, it's pretty great.
- will_pseudonym 6y ago
  Yeah, and I also wish there was a way to filter out content from select people who I follow for their subject matter expertise, and I'm not interested in reading about their takes on politics. I don't mind that they're wanting to share those views, but I wish I could follow just their subject matter content. And by the same token, it would also encourage people to be able to post those non-subject matter tweets, if they knew that people wouldn't have to unfollow them if they preferred to avoid politics. Allowing people to choose to bifurcate what they follow a person for enhances the network, I think. And I should say, it's not even necessarily about politics. I'm not a huge sports fan, and in the same way, I would like to be able to unfollow posts about sports, etc of friends on Facebook.
  - jjb123 6y ago
    Reddit is great for subject matter. Not perfect but actually gets better and better every year.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      As long as you’re okay with politics leaking in. There isn’t a sub of any significant size that doesn’t become a reflection of the leftist echo chamber of the larger community. Mods can surely delete comments that outright state anything political, but they don’t control the fact that the votes are controlled by the community and the votes favor things that fit in with a particular political world view. All this to say, a vote-driven platform with an overwhelmingly one-sided user-base is not a great place to host a community.
elevenoh 6y ago
Anyone have a quality the 'elevator pitch' type message on why someone should leave twitter for something like substack?
- ecshafer 6y ago
  I don't even consider substack as a competitor to twitter. I'll admit I am biased since I have never seen the appeal of Twitter, and every single time I have used it is has left a bad taste. But Substack seems to mostly be a way for journalists and writers to independently write. The writers I follow on substack write long form essays, and are usually too heterodox to exist in mainstream media. Its the next evolution of blogs really, and more serious than medium. Twitter is 140 characters of nonsense that has produced zero good.
Barrin92 6y ago
>Yet Another Quitting Twitter Story Not much more content in the actual piece. Seems to be very fashionable these days to either quit social media or traditional journalism for substack but honestly I feel like it resembles self-advertisement combined with mediocre pieces more than anything of value. The argumentation like in this piece is usually that there is some bad incentive that these independent platforms avoid, like virality in this case, or being beholden to someone else, but I don't see how this isn't true for independent publishing. If you run your own platform you potentially still want it to go viral if you want to monetize it (which I assume why people post it to sites such as HN or reddit, read social media), and you're beholden to your readers in a sort of patronage like relationship.
- madrox 6y ago
  At no point did say independent platforms are immune, but I can see why there might be the appearance of that subtext since I'm using substack. I'm using substack because I can use it without needing to buy into a social graph, and I enjoy writing longform. I think the messages that are effective on Twitter are true of all media whose goal is to reach as many people as possible. The things that work on Twitter did not start on Twitter, which I mention. Word of mouth marketing was coined in the 70s, I believe. What I believe makes social platforms more vulnerable to it is the user's inability to protect themselves from the messages of its most effective extreme actors.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Platforms are an anti-Web regression.
ciarannolan 6y ago
Can someone please explain to me how subscriptions work on Substack? I just spent 5 minutes clicking around and still can't figure it out. How much is it? Where does my money go? Reading a piece on Substack then clicking "Subscribe" only to have them demand my email address with no additional info is really off-putting.
- f_allwein 6y ago
  Apparently, it‘s free at first, but publishers can choose to charge later: „Build your audience on Substack, or bring them over. When you're ready, you can add paid subscriptions.“
netmonk 6y ago
So he escaped to a safe-space ?
chiefalchemist 6y ago
> The tools that users have to manage their information intake have not matured as quickly as virality tools. This is mostly because social media's financial incentives are in advertising and analytics, which are at odds with user curation. The purposeful marginalization of RSS takes on new meaning in this context. RSS consumption enables control. Great for users. Not so great for other more power-hungry entities.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Even Craigslist has dumped RSS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24840310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24840310 :-(
jsonne 6y ago
Twitter used to drive me crazy. I had an account but didn't login for years at a time. My use has gone up significantly by: 1. Only following industry people and chefs. Basically just work and hobby. Anyone that strays into politics or social issues is hard cut. Not because they're wrong for doing so, but because with an anxiety disorder I'm not equipped to handle the constant bombardment of that. 2. I got a plugin that blocks the trending topics. 3. I have a keyword blocker for anything politically or socially related. With that my experience has improved dramatically, but I really only was able to curate that experience because I work in the social media marketing industry. Regular users aren't as well equipped in the slightest. It's great because now I can use it for networking and my interests in a way thats much better than Facebook groups (which is what I formerly used to make industry connections).
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  I fervently believe that having software "agents" that work to overcome the algorithmic feed and provide us with balanced / beneficial social media. It's going to be a long slog to get there, kind of like our generations fight for safety at work legislation (or pollution legislation). This needs not only the software to exist (what plug-in do you use?) but the regulatory environment to allow / support / promote it and controversially the default settings - which I suspect will be the biggest political fight - I think we need to explore the concepts of Libertarian Paternalism exposed by Richard Thaler.
  - jsonne 6y ago
    This is the plugin I use for chrome. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hide-twitter-trends/lapmncfnibdclongbkleadoicnkhknia?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hide-twitter-trend... As for the keyword blockers that actually is a Twitter feature now though it's a bit buried. The "hard cuts" I talked about were a combo of unfollowing/muting/blocking depending on how aggressive they were / are.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Can you define balanced or beneficial? Can you define it remotely mathematically? If no to the second algorithims are flat out impossible. They aren't magical genies regardless of what you believe. If no to the first you can't even make ill-considered laws. Even somehow having the concept is no guarantee - it could be a largely useless tautology of the Drake equation. If we knew the density of intelligent alien life and parameters of signals they would actually use we wouldn't be asking why we haven't found any yet. If you cannot obtain the information how are you going to tell if it is "beneficial" or "balanced" as opposed to your own assumptions as articles of faith?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Glyptodon 6y ago
I hate how if you do something like quit using Twitter after being a user or quit working for Facebook after working there and you get cred, but don't use it to begin with or never apply to places you think are sketch and people will just roll their eyes, even it you aren't the one bringing it up.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  Are you familiar with the story of the prodigal son from the Bible? https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+15%3A11-32&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+15%3A11-32... Background: a man has two sons. He gives half of his wealth to each. The older son is a regular hardworking fellow who stuck around and helped and obeyed his father. The younger one squandered all of it away and after falling upon hard times, realized the folly of his ways and came back to his father, full of repentance. The father threw a large feast for him. “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
  - esperent 6y ago
    I think it would have been fairer if the father threw a party for the other son too.
    - identity0 6y ago
      You missed the entire point.
      - angrais 6y ago
        Could be because like most stories in the Bible (or religious texts more generally) that the lesson learnt is often vague or implicit, and therefore may not even exist.
oblib 6y ago
I never really got involved with Twitter. I made an account and followed a few that I thought might be interesting but it just didn't really engage or entice me enough to make it a daily habit. I'm not at all fannish though and I think Twitter appeals most to those who are. It gives them a connection to celebrities and that's a very deep seated aspect of our cultures. I'm more into learning and we can learn something from everyone so I spend my internet time more on long form media that dives deeper into subjects that interest me. Sometimes a tweet I've seen will lead me there so I don't think it's worthless, but most of those I see are referenced somewhere other than Twitter.
mlang23 6y ago
Everyone still in their right mind should quit Twitter. Actual, now is a very good moment to do so. Quit before the election. You're not going to miss anything healthy.
quibbler 6y ago
Just a reminder that even before social media, people sometimes became hateful towards each other, belueved conspiracy theories, and even started wars and revolutions. I'm not convinced that social media is to be blamed for social unrest.
unnouinceput 6y ago
I don't have Twitter. Where do I sign-up for my piece of blog to lament why I don't have Twitter? </sarcasm>
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
joubert 6y ago
“the endgame of virality is extremism”
torresjrjr 6y ago
If you are a reader looking for a viable alternative to Twitter and problematic social media in general, take a look at the Fediverse. I wrote an article explaining the Fediverse, but really you can just search online for it. https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediverse https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediv... https://fediverse.network https://fediverse.network It's decentralised and federated, and works on sane, standard protocols. It essentially rips out the problems caused by massive centralisation. I'm a big advocate for it, and for good reason. I believe we're currently collectively around 3 million users and growing, so it's definitely not a niche. It's not a magic wand of a solution, but it delivers where it matters the most.
ph2082 6y ago
I wish if there is option to turn of "What's happening". That is where "Today's Madness" comes from. Hashtag feature is hacked by political organisations/bots. The users's I follow, usually science and tech, mostly post interesting stuff.

113 points by madrox 6y ago

I was just thinking about that too this AM while working on my car. No one is on twitter to have a conversation, it’s a room full of screaming people. I wouldn’t walk into that room physically, so why am I walking into virtually? It’s time to quit

chrisweekly 6y ago
"No one is on twitter to have a conversation, it’s a room full of screaming people." It's not a room, but a city. You've clearly been spending time in a bad part of town. Ruthlessly curating lists of people/accounts worth following will transform your experience.
- FooHentai 6y ago
  Twitter is certainly more palatable with a ruthlessly curated feed. In fact I think it's a mandatory action or you'll simply stop engaging with the platform. So anyone who's an ongoing twitter user is guaranteed to have a highly filtered view of what's posted. So in the end the tailoring capability makes itself an obligation, which leads to users floating in their own opinions and information bubble, leads to ... interesting ... outcomes when the real world comes knocking. This is markedly different to how it has been before with specialist forums etc. There, while there was coalescence around particular topics, the range of opinions and personalities participating was otherwise quite open and the ability to filter was limited (or rather, elective in a way that twitter feed curation is not). There was certainly some self-selection at play but it's intensified massively with the shift in dynamic. Facebook has the same issue as twitter of course and I suspect many other platforms as well - One mitigating approach is to try and keep conflicting views on your feed but it quickly becomes so tiresome that your engagement with the platform as a whole drops. I'm not sure there's a good approach other than to go full wargames.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  Even most "good" people/accounts aren't really having a conversation. Tweets are almost always very bold statements with little nuance.
  - chrisweekly 6y ago
    Sure, but that's true IRL too -- and is mostly moot if you enjoy scanning your highly-curated lists of Twitter handles to see what certain smart and/or interesting people have to say.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Ruthlessly curating lists of people/accounts worth following will transform your experience. But who has time for that? The OP said he was thinking about it while working on his car. A real life thing that I expect is a lot more satisfying than staring at phosphor being "ruthless" to strangers.
  - chrisweekly 6y ago
    > "who has time for that?" Given how many hours of daily television are consumed by your average 1st-world person, just about everyone.
tayo42 6y ago
The format and discoverability are the biggest problem. Any conversation is hidden away in accounts tweets. If you don't know the specific account then you won't know what's being talked about. There's also no community unless your already famous. It's essentially anonymous. Reddit I think has the potential for the best discussion platform. The people are the biggest problem, and upvotes are a good idea, but doesn't seem to work in practice
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  IMO discoverability is an anti feature. Having random people drop in constantly means you can never have a real community or users that are even familiar with the rules. I love things like IM groups/discord servers because they are somewhat hidden and hard to find. You get invited by a friend or see a link somewhere and join and when you do join you tend to stick around for a while.
jcims 6y ago
It would be funny to get a bunch of people from Twitter that have been shouting at each other together into a room and ask them to re-enact their 'conversation' in person.
- TravHatesMe 6y ago
  That would make for an interesting youtube video! Realistically you could get actors to read the lines. Although the text that someone wrote could be orally said in many different ways; it might be challenging to accurately portray the conversation.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    It's been done for YouTube comments before. There's a series about it: https://youtu.be/MxrWuE5qC5c https://youtu.be/MxrWuE5qC5c
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  people from Twitter that have been shouting at each other together into a room and ask them to re-enact their 'conversation' in person Mike Tyson says: “Social media made you all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
quickthrower2 6y ago
Twitter's UI is hostile to conversation. It took me ages to figure out how to read replies (vs. make a reply myself) and on mobile navigating around different replies is horrible, even worse than Reddit's attempt to make this hard.

throwaway7281 6y ago

The most strong signal I get is that substack is putting in a lot of money seemingly to bootstrap content.

im3w1l 6y ago

> The rise of fake news, the alt-right, and other extreme social factions coincide with the rise of viral platforms for that reason. Reality check: Twitter didn't cause the Uighur situation.

TheChaplain 6y ago

I think what most fail on when it comes to Twitter, is following the right people. Personally I follow a bunch of vendors of products I like, a whole ring of C++ and developers, as well as a few game developers. So I have a quite pleasant and informative Twitter experience because I am selective.

chrisweekly 6y ago
Same experience here. If you exclusively follow smart, interesting people, it's pretty great.
will_pseudonym 6y ago
Yeah, and I also wish there was a way to filter out content from select people who I follow for their subject matter expertise, and I'm not interested in reading about their takes on politics. I don't mind that they're wanting to share those views, but I wish I could follow just their subject matter content. And by the same token, it would also encourage people to be able to post those non-subject matter tweets, if they knew that people wouldn't have to unfollow them if they preferred to avoid politics. Allowing people to choose to bifurcate what they follow a person for enhances the network, I think. And I should say, it's not even necessarily about politics. I'm not a huge sports fan, and in the same way, I would like to be able to unfollow posts about sports, etc of friends on Facebook.
- jjb123 6y ago
  Reddit is great for subject matter. Not perfect but actually gets better and better every year.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    As long as you’re okay with politics leaking in. There isn’t a sub of any significant size that doesn’t become a reflection of the leftist echo chamber of the larger community. Mods can surely delete comments that outright state anything political, but they don’t control the fact that the votes are controlled by the community and the votes favor things that fit in with a particular political world view. All this to say, a vote-driven platform with an overwhelmingly one-sided user-base is not a great place to host a community.

elevenoh 6y ago

Anyone have a quality the 'elevator pitch' type message on why someone should leave twitter for something like substack?

ecshafer 6y ago
I don't even consider substack as a competitor to twitter. I'll admit I am biased since I have never seen the appeal of Twitter, and every single time I have used it is has left a bad taste. But Substack seems to mostly be a way for journalists and writers to independently write. The writers I follow on substack write long form essays, and are usually too heterodox to exist in mainstream media. Its the next evolution of blogs really, and more serious than medium. Twitter is 140 characters of nonsense that has produced zero good.

Barrin92 6y ago

>Yet Another Quitting Twitter Story Not much more content in the actual piece. Seems to be very fashionable these days to either quit social media or traditional journalism for substack but honestly I feel like it resembles self-advertisement combined with mediocre pieces more than anything of value. The argumentation like in this piece is usually that there is some bad incentive that these independent platforms avoid, like virality in this case, or being beholden to someone else, but I don't see how this isn't true for independent publishing. If you run your own platform you potentially still want it to go viral if you want to monetize it (which I assume why people post it to sites such as HN or reddit, read social media), and you're beholden to your readers in a sort of patronage like relationship.

madrox 6y ago
At no point did say independent platforms are immune, but I can see why there might be the appearance of that subtext since I'm using substack. I'm using substack because I can use it without needing to buy into a social graph, and I enjoy writing longform. I think the messages that are effective on Twitter are true of all media whose goal is to reach as many people as possible. The things that work on Twitter did not start on Twitter, which I mention. Word of mouth marketing was coined in the 70s, I believe. What I believe makes social platforms more vulnerable to it is the user's inability to protect themselves from the messages of its most effective extreme actors.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
Platforms are an anti-Web regression.

ciarannolan 6y ago

Can someone please explain to me how subscriptions work on Substack? I just spent 5 minutes clicking around and still can't figure it out. How much is it? Where does my money go? Reading a piece on Substack then clicking "Subscribe" only to have them demand my email address with no additional info is really off-putting.

f_allwein 6y ago
Apparently, it‘s free at first, but publishers can choose to charge later: „Build your audience on Substack, or bring them over. When you're ready, you can add paid subscriptions.“

netmonk 6y ago

So he escaped to a safe-space ?

chiefalchemist 6y ago

> The tools that users have to manage their information intake have not matured as quickly as virality tools. This is mostly because social media's financial incentives are in advertising and analytics, which are at odds with user curation. The purposeful marginalization of RSS takes on new meaning in this context. RSS consumption enables control. Great for users. Not so great for other more power-hungry entities.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Even Craigslist has dumped RSS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24840310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24840310 :-(

jsonne 6y ago

Twitter used to drive me crazy. I had an account but didn't login for years at a time. My use has gone up significantly by: 1. Only following industry people and chefs. Basically just work and hobby. Anyone that strays into politics or social issues is hard cut. Not because they're wrong for doing so, but because with an anxiety disorder I'm not equipped to handle the constant bombardment of that. 2. I got a plugin that blocks the trending topics. 3. I have a keyword blocker for anything politically or socially related. With that my experience has improved dramatically, but I really only was able to curate that experience because I work in the social media marketing industry. Regular users aren't as well equipped in the slightest. It's great because now I can use it for networking and my interests in a way thats much better than Facebook groups (which is what I formerly used to make industry connections).

lifeisstillgood 6y ago
I fervently believe that having software "agents" that work to overcome the algorithmic feed and provide us with balanced / beneficial social media. It's going to be a long slog to get there, kind of like our generations fight for safety at work legislation (or pollution legislation). This needs not only the software to exist (what plug-in do you use?) but the regulatory environment to allow / support / promote it and controversially the default settings - which I suspect will be the biggest political fight - I think we need to explore the concepts of Libertarian Paternalism exposed by Richard Thaler.
- jsonne 6y ago
  This is the plugin I use for chrome. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hide-twitter-trends/lapmncfnibdclongbkleadoicnkhknia?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hide-twitter-trend... As for the keyword blockers that actually is a Twitter feature now though it's a bit buried. The "hard cuts" I talked about were a combo of unfollowing/muting/blocking depending on how aggressive they were / are.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Can you define balanced or beneficial? Can you define it remotely mathematically? If no to the second algorithims are flat out impossible. They aren't magical genies regardless of what you believe. If no to the first you can't even make ill-considered laws. Even somehow having the concept is no guarantee - it could be a largely useless tautology of the Drake equation. If we knew the density of intelligent alien life and parameters of signals they would actually use we wouldn't be asking why we haven't found any yet. If you cannot obtain the information how are you going to tell if it is "beneficial" or "balanced" as opposed to your own assumptions as articles of faith?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Glyptodon 6y ago

I hate how if you do something like quit using Twitter after being a user or quit working for Facebook after working there and you get cred, but don't use it to begin with or never apply to places you think are sketch and people will just roll their eyes, even it you aren't the one bringing it up.

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
Are you familiar with the story of the prodigal son from the Bible? https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+15%3A11-32&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+15%3A11-32... Background: a man has two sons. He gives half of his wealth to each. The older son is a regular hardworking fellow who stuck around and helped and obeyed his father. The younger one squandered all of it away and after falling upon hard times, realized the folly of his ways and came back to his father, full of repentance. The father threw a large feast for him. “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
- esperent 6y ago
  I think it would have been fairer if the father threw a party for the other son too.
  - identity0 6y ago
    You missed the entire point.
    - angrais 6y ago
      Could be because like most stories in the Bible (or religious texts more generally) that the lesson learnt is often vague or implicit, and therefore may not even exist.

oblib 6y ago

I never really got involved with Twitter. I made an account and followed a few that I thought might be interesting but it just didn't really engage or entice me enough to make it a daily habit. I'm not at all fannish though and I think Twitter appeals most to those who are. It gives them a connection to celebrities and that's a very deep seated aspect of our cultures. I'm more into learning and we can learn something from everyone so I spend my internet time more on long form media that dives deeper into subjects that interest me. Sometimes a tweet I've seen will lead me there so I don't think it's worthless, but most of those I see are referenced somewhere other than Twitter.

mlang23 6y ago

Everyone still in their right mind should quit Twitter. Actual, now is a very good moment to do so. Quit before the election. You're not going to miss anything healthy.

quibbler 6y ago

Just a reminder that even before social media, people sometimes became hateful towards each other, belueved conspiracy theories, and even started wars and revolutions. I'm not convinced that social media is to be blamed for social unrest.

unnouinceput 6y ago

I don't have Twitter. Where do I sign-up for my piece of blog to lament why I don't have Twitter? </sarcasm>

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

joubert 6y ago

“the endgame of virality is extremism”

torresjrjr 6y ago

If you are a reader looking for a viable alternative to Twitter and problematic social media in general, take a look at the Fediverse. I wrote an article explaining the Fediverse, but really you can just search online for it. https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediverse https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediv... https://fediverse.network https://fediverse.network It's decentralised and federated, and works on sane, standard protocols. It essentially rips out the problems caused by massive centralisation. I'm a big advocate for it, and for good reason. I believe we're currently collectively around 3 million users and growing, so it's definitely not a niche. It's not a magic wand of a solution, but it delivers where it matters the most.

ph2082 6y ago

I wish if there is option to turn of "What's happening". That is where "Today's Madness" comes from. Hashtag feature is hacked by political organisations/bots. The users's I follow, usually science and tech, mostly post interesting stuff.