8 ms·

A Twitter addict realizes she needs rehab

89 points by DLay 5y ago

underseacables 5y ago
Im surprised by The Atlantic publishing this, so much of the media are dependent upon twitter for stories
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  The Atlantic has consistently done a good job of balancing perspectives, at least along certain axes. They were the first mainstream/prestige publication I can recall that dared to criticize the illiberal swing the left was taking, during a period when there was quite a chilling effect around doing so (with Haight's Coddling of the American Mind article, in 2015). They're exactly the publication I'd expect to publish something that breaks with the groupthink infecting the rest of the industry.
dave_sid 5y ago
Okay
leesalminen 5y ago
I quit Twitter 1 year ago this week and couldn’t be happier about my decision. The time distance has made me realize how banal the whole thing is. I used to think I was staying in the loop of what society is thinking about. In retrospect, it was really just the loudest 1% and didn’t represent what anyone I know in real life was talking about.
- altano 5y ago
  The internet in general is prone to “the loudest 1%” problem, but Twitter is something special where it’s the craziest and loudest 0.01%. It’s so sad because all JS related discourse moved to Twitter at some point so I keep trying to make it work, but have to keep quitting for my sanity’s sake.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    Was JS Twitter itself toxic? Because if not I don't see why you wouldn't just follow the relevant accounts and not see any of the stuff the article talks about.
    - lhnz 5y ago
      Yes. A lot of JS Twitter is extremely toxic.
      - g00gler 5y ago
        It’s absolutely insane and there’s really no reason for it. Controversy with the angular team or high profile developers — why? I’ve been off social media for years but I’d hear about it second hand from coworkers.
      - hallway_monitor 5y ago
        A lot of JS is extremely toxic.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        JS is actually okay. Horrible, horrible language, but like PHP there's some decent stuff in it. The only bad things about JS (other than JS itself) are the "write everything in four layers of frameworks" (but that's more a webdev thing than a JavaScript thing) and "four billion node dependencies that re-implement JavaScript built-ins" (bad, but not "extremely toxic").
    - altano 5y ago
      Yes, even JS Twitter is extremely toxic by my definition. But more importantly there is no group of people you can follow to keep the ratio of JS related content above even 10%. It’s not a reasonable way of following a topic.
      - j4yav 5y ago
- tunesmith 5y ago
  What do you use to check news every day?
  - leesalminen 5y ago
    News.Google.com for a max of 30 minutes per day.
  - underseacables 5y ago
    Hckrnews.com
  - iliekcomputers 5y ago
    Taking a step back, do we really _need_ to check news every day? I read The Economist which is weekly, and I haven't felt like I'm uninformed much.
    - ptk 5y ago
      This is me too. And the me of 2 years ago would have been aghast about that. But I now finding myself missing pretty major news cycles regularly because eventually you learn to trust the fact that you can "catch up" at any point in time. I've really enjoyed letting news happen and not getting caught up in the immediacy of it.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      I've stopped. I check my local news, I still read HN daily, but I don't watch or read any TV or national news. 99.9% of it has zero impact on my day-to-day life.
    - all2 5y ago
      Replying to throwawayboise: I've done the same exact thing. I find very little usefulness in the national and international posturing, blaming, and virtue signaling that makes up most broadcast, cable, and print news.
    - tomjen3 5y ago
      I didn't need to before Covid, but our government decided that it was okay to change rules (drastically), on a day-to-day basis, then when they got called out for changing them with less than 24 hour warning, decided that 48 hours was fine. If you didn't follow the news, you could get caught up and have to pay a not insubstantial fine, or more realistically you were planning to do something that was deemed safe enough some days earlier. An older example: if you didn't pay attention to the news on 9/11 you risked being stuck in the airport for a very long time. So yeah, there are situations where you do need to follow the news. Not often, but two global events have happened in my lifetime (3 if you count the fall of the Berlin wall) where you really did need to pay attention to the news. Maybe some sort of exponential back-of is warrented? Say you check the news and if nothing relevant happend you check in again the next day, then you skip a day, then two, etc. When an event happens where you need to follow the news (say a local flood), you go back to an hourly checkup. The final thing I have noticed is that the news you need to follow are mostly very local. What happens in other countries is, relatively speaking, of no importance to you.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  I think a big thing is that Twitter can often repræsent itself as though what many outside of it call “Twitter views” are more mainstream than they are. 4chan, for instance, also comes with rather niche views, but does not attempt to convince one that it's views are anything but niche. Being immersed in Twitter, and many other websites known to create “filter bubbles”, eventually might make one believe it is the mainstream. In fact, it is not so dissimilar from how I think U.S.A. culture works; it is often noted how often inhabitants inside of it loose perspective of how idiosyncratic U.S.A. cultural memes are nothing more than that, as the people there often phrase them as though they be of a more global, even timeless nature.
- prasenjit_pro 5y ago
  At a personal perspective it is best to quit most social media channels including Twitter for a daily surfing craving because only a handful people whom you care & whom you matter the most would be there waiting on social media. Most of my closed people miss the personal touch, some free time jumping around to the ground and spending time at some pals place and hate to talk on Social media while we can do many more things out of the Internet box. It's what matters. History of our online usage can be used by advertisers but not by our loved ones.
throwaway98797 5y ago
Curate aggressively. A gun is dangerous. Twitter is dangerous. Both are useful if used appropriately with the right training and safeguards.
- altano 5y ago
  This is exactly the problem: Twitter, unlike other platforms like Reddit and even Facebook, make curation impossible. Want to follow someone who posts a lot of interesting things about JS? Be prepared to see posts they like about curry poodles. Oh here’s some worst-in-class topic recommendations barfed out by depressed ML, and you can’t turn them off. What do you mean you don’t like Roseanne Nostalgia? Here are some Binky The Clown Stock Tips.
  - dewey 5y ago
    > make curation impossible You can just use any of the numerous third party clients that have a sorted timeline and don't inject random posts in your timeline.
    - brewdad 5y ago
      It's not the random posts, it's that the people you follow on Twitter are human (hopefully) and will post about things outside the core reason for following them. I follow a bunch of sports writers on Twitter to keep up on my favorite teams and fantasy stuff. Invariably, on slow news days, they will post about their kids, cats, the weather, anything other than the teams they cover. I generally don't mind but will unfollow if the balance gets too far out of whack or if they get political in an untenable way. YMMV as far as where to draw the line between content and fluff.
      - dewey 5y ago
        Fair enough, I was referring to the "Be prepared to see posts they like about" part of the argument where Twitter shows you random likes of people you follow in your stream.
    - 5y ago
elliekelly 5y ago
I was hoping the article would end with the author deleting her twitter account altogether but it seems she recently “straw-tweeted” a link to this article: https://mobile.twitter.com/CaitlinPacific/status/1412091950618976258 https://mobile.twitter.com/CaitlinPacific/status/14120919506...
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  I suspect she thought it'd be more helpful to share that with Twitter users than delete her account. (But I do share the sentiment – why keep an account with a system that's doing you harm?)
pixxel 5y ago
I quit Twitter around 2014/5. I couldn’t figure out why people were posting about inane topics (what I ate for breakfast etc.) and not talking about subjects that matter (politics, corruption etc.). In particular why weren’t celebrities with huge followings not talking about important issues. Well, how wrong was I. I’d love to go back to that time.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  I've heard the exact opposite critisim of twitter; that it is too politicised and there's too much USpol
  - majewsky 5y ago
    That's what GP meant.
swader999 5y ago
I find twitter really good for staying abreast of local emergencies. Fire in the area, road closed etc. All the EMS are on it and post near real time updates when stuff is going on.
tifadg1 5y ago
I never found the appeal. If something important is posted, it'll be picked up by everyone, otherwise it's 99% likely noise, and not even the interesting kind.
- axaxs 5y ago
  Same. I don't really use social media, but see the appeal of some. FB for staying in touch with family and friends. Insta for sharing photos. Heck even TikTok looks like a lot of fun. Twitter just seems like narcissistic self important people yelling over each other. Guess I never figured that one out.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
captainmuon 5y ago
Besides my personal account which I rarely use, I collaborate on another account that is mostly write-only, to be honest. Social media is good if you want to spread a message and reach other interested people. It is also good to find interesting stuff as a distraction. Social networks used to be good to represent yourself, to keep contact with friends, and to meet new real people around you. It's really sad nothing like that exists anymore.
xg15 5y ago
Out of couriosity, with all the attempts to create a "healthy" social network, has anyone attempted to build one that has a defined downtime for the entire network? (I'm thinking at least a consecutive week each month, possibly more) After all, a large part of "withdrawal" seems to be FOMO, i.e. the feeling that everyone else is having the time of their life while you are missing out. However, if you can be sure nothing is happening because the network is shut down, FOMO might be greatly reduced.
- batch12 5y ago
  Interesting. This reminds me of the bank of time I used to have to manage on a BBS. Imagine being limited to 30/60 minutes a day. Would that make interactions more valuable?
- david_allison 5y ago
  https://www.sundayy.app/ https://www.sundayy.app/ does this
tayo42 5y ago
I guess the author was kept around by the need to comment and interact. Seems like an aspect that I don't hear about to much. Usually people seem to talk about scrolling, consuming and time wasting on these sites. I can kind of relate to this behavior.(even here I'm commenting, sharing my pointless thoughts lol) I guess she just has a need and strong desire to share thoughts and write them down. Considering she seems to be enough of an author to be published writing is something she likes to do. Twitter would be another outlet for that. Is that so bad, as long as its not interfering with the rest of her life. Seems like she still is writing long articles regularly. I feel like i got wrapped up in the need to comment too. I did do some similar experiments on my self. The trigger for this was political stuff. A little more drastically i went and deleted my twitter account, to my surprise the account is actually fully gone after 30 days. I never felt like putting the effort to get an account back so that habit is pretty much gone. Facebook doesn't have much of a network for me anymore, feels like its dying so it doesn't get much use from me except for linking with instagram. Instagram i only use as a photo sharing place and to see artwork, not really a commenter there. Disconnecting from reddit was interesting, i found my self still wanting to comment, and make throwaway jokes. Nothing thoughtful, dumb shit i thought would be funny. Sometimes I would see a small comment suggesting something wrong and wanted to them know. It feels like weird behavior. Overall i guess i wonder why we make comments, like what drives this behavior. Then why most other people don't participate. I think only 1% or something of an online community actually contribute. These comments seem to be somewhere between actually sharing thoughts and socializing but not quite either.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I think a big part of it is that it feels like we are losing our chance to influence society. That can come back to bite us when people go to vote, based on what they’ve learned on social media. So it creates an urgency to throw something out there so that we aren’t bystanders to the formation of societal opinions.
- allenu 5y ago
  I think we make comments because we want our thoughts and opinions to be validated by someone else. With Twitter, you have an endless list of trending topics to discuss, and an endless list of people to discuss them. In real life, you have to bring up a topic and provide some context surrounding it before you can even share your opinion on it. Even then, your conversation partner may not even be interested in what you have to say. But on social media, someone out there must be interested in your thoughts, and is likely well-versed in it (they're also tweeting actively), so you post it. You get a 'like' or a response for your thought or opinion. You feel good. The thing is, opinions require zero energy or effort. You just have them. I think that's part of what makes it addictive. You don't have to do any work, just share your thoughts, and you'll get feedback from the system. That feedback feels good. With enough feedback, you're soon sharing the most pithy thoughts, or most banal facts just to get another hit.
lovelyviking 5y ago
Oh ... Twitter! How about those who never joined the Twitter? Should I join the Twitter? Serious question. Why to join it in the first place? What are the reasons to join it?
- FilMo 5y ago
  I don't use Twitter nor Instagram. I'm not a social media addict. I always can join my friends by phone. Or if I need to meet new people, I can easily find communication or get a gf at one of the top rated hookup sites (https://www.besthookup-sites.com/ https://www.besthookup-sites.com/). So there is no need to join all those junk social media and stick there for a long time sorting someone's else garbage.
bastard_op 5y ago
I get annoyed every time people post twitter links here and wish they'd stop. Since twits requires javascript (to infect/track everyone) now, I just will not. It's like the old paywall site argument, will you sell your soul?
themodelplumber 5y ago
I guess as long as you're not addicted(?), Twitter is a great research tool for specific kinds of things. For example open source intelligence topics. Or general learning about a given topic. Tons of writers and journalists use Twitter, so if you're interested in higher-quality takes on a given topic, or just updates on e.g. author interviews and upcoming events, it can be a really good resource. I tested Twitter while doing some research on astrology and found that some of the most on-target astrology advice I could find was found in the Twitter Topic for my ascendant sign (different from the typical sun sign used in astrology). It was far better than some of the paid services I tested. Very subjective-anecdotal (I ended up making my own lists based on what was interesting/useful to me) but I think it shows that it helps to consciously examine what Twitter is good at. Lists can be really good too. Like this one for Open Source CAD: https://twitter.com/i/lists/963793700190146560 https://twitter.com/i/lists/963793700190146560
i_haz_rabies 5y ago
Caitlin Flanagan is one of the most entertaining writers around.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
They hide the tweet counts for a reason. It's hard to respect the "Verified" users if you knew they all have tweet counts that when divided by hours since they joined the platform it comes out at over 1 tweet an hour every hour for 9+ years. You can check this yourself using the wayback machine to see all their counts from before it was hidden. Pretty much every popular personality on Twitter is hopelessly addicted to it and you realize how little value their views have when they must be staring at it for hours and hours a day.
- danso 5y ago
  But tweet counts aren’t hidden? In the iOS app, they show up at the top when you scroll down a user timeline. On the web app, it’s always visible on the sticky header of a user’s profile/timeline
- majewsky 5y ago
  Twitter users at this scale often have content teams that post for them. Also, 1/hour is 24/day which you can easily reach by making 2-3 original posts and then spamming out a few short replies to comments. Should not take more than 1 or 2 hours of your day if you find your proper groove.
sys_64738 5y ago
The only utility I ever got from Twitter was negotiating favorable rates for Xfinity via the Comcast Twitter handle. Otherwise it feels like a complete waste of time.
u678u 5y ago
I've gone in a cycle through different Social Media sites, after a year or so I manage to get the strength to leave but usually end up on a different site. One thing is I always delete my account after 3-6 months and create a new one, following different people/groups etc.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
It was time for Twitter rehab. It was to be a battle of wills between one aging, chemo-addled brain and So the real story is she had chemo therapy at some point, presumably for cancer, and was still impaired and during presumably her recovery, Twitter became too big a thing in her life. Either out of prosaic misattribution or intentionally creating drama for the sake of writing a story, she frames it as an addiction she needed to beat. This really had nothing to do with Twitter. If Twitter hadn't existed, there would be some other thing she got stuck on during recovery. Twitter was the right amount of mental engagement for her during recovery when harder things were beyond her reach. When she was more recovered, she recognized it was time to move on and do other things. And she did so. The end.
- nickkell 5y ago
  I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. She mentions chemo once in passing, but not when she went through it. Her profile says she joined Twitter in 2009, so quite a long time. Anyway, what do you think she'd be addicted to if not Twitter? Crack cocaine?
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Anyway, what do you think she'd be addicted to if not Twitter? Crack cocaine? Maybe crossword puzzles, which were the go to back in the day for people who liked words.
fruityrudy 5y ago
For tech it’s very important for staying up to date. There is a lot of content there that is not elsewhere. The best strategy is to block keywords to avoid all the social justice and politics. I just wished they allowed blocking more than 200 words.
sylens 5y ago
A bit from Bo Burnham's new special "Inside" has really resonated with me. He essentially says that people are increasingly treating real life as some sort of coal mine - a place where they go to extract something (an experience, an opinion, whatever) and then bring it back to the surface to share and use in the digital world.
- zikduruqe 5y ago
  It used to be that art imitated life. It is now that life imitates art.
- throwaway98797 5y ago
  This has always been the case. To live for onself onto one self is hard. Much easier to share your life and convince yourself it has meaning through external validation. There’s rarely peace in one owns head. The hollow solace lies outside of us, with true peace hard to achieve, if achievable at all.
Popegaf 5y ago
Twitter is about the worst platform I've seen. It's worse than all the "chan" websites and I don't know how they are allowed to continue. The only major difference I can see between the two are the political and ideological opposites. On the chans it's A-OK to post about wiping out some "inferior race", while on Twitter wiping out or mistreating men is accepted. All kinds of kink porn is easily found on Twitter (which was a big surprise), people confess to crimes, harass each other, dox and send death threats to "the other side", spread fake news, falsely accuse each other with real world consequences, and so much more. Yet somehow, Twitter is a standard app on devices, newspapers, governments, underage kids and grandpas use it. Is it just money?
- majewsky 5y ago
  Your fallacy is assuming that Twitter is the same thing for everyone. I have none of what you describe in my timeline, mostly because I don't go out of my way to search for this stuff. Your argument is not unlike "why is the government supporting the printing of books when some books contain inflammatory speech and bomb building manuals" (though obviously not a 1:1 equivalence because books don't have algorithmic recommendations by themselves).
underseacables 5y ago
Actual title: You Really Need to Quit Twitter Not that I disagree, but it is a rule
eimrine 5y ago
I have not get started with Twitter on my very first it use because I have subscribed to roughly hundred accounts a day, maybe more. They were mostly relable to my business. My account has became shadowbanned and my posts (all 10 with unique photos) has marked as suspicious but only for others. Maybe it is because I have written something about ncov-19. Also I hoped I can tweet from SMS without need to have access to web - but I could not setup this option, maybe I do not know something. I decided to do nothing but if SMS option is possible in some way I will try to unlock my account to start use it for promoting my business.
Arete314159 5y ago
I hate twitter and I'm also addicted to it. The reason I'm on it is because a lot of the best info on Covid this year breaks on Twitter weeks or even months before it's common knowledge.
foobarbazetc 5y ago
I quit Twitter on March 20th and it was the best thing I’ve done in a long, long time. The funny thing was that it starts sending you random notifications from people you don’t even follow or have the bell on for as a dark pattern to get you to come back. What I realized is — like how I quit reading the news many years ago — everything on Twitter is pointless and ephemeral. From one outrage cycle to the next, never relenting. Everyone always mad about some meaningless minutiae. If it was actually important it would surface by some other means so I never missed anything. Then I’d go outside and everyone’s living their lives like Twitter doesn’t exist. It’s easier to do than you think. Lock your account, turn off notifications for the whole app, and do literally anything else.

89 points by DLay 5y ago

underseacables 5y ago

Im surprised by The Atlantic publishing this, so much of the media are dependent upon twitter for stories

wutbrodo 5y ago
The Atlantic has consistently done a good job of balancing perspectives, at least along certain axes. They were the first mainstream/prestige publication I can recall that dared to criticize the illiberal swing the left was taking, during a period when there was quite a chilling effect around doing so (with Haight's Coddling of the American Mind article, in 2015). They're exactly the publication I'd expect to publish something that breaks with the groupthink infecting the rest of the industry.

dave_sid 5y ago

Okay

leesalminen 5y ago

I quit Twitter 1 year ago this week and couldn’t be happier about my decision. The time distance has made me realize how banal the whole thing is. I used to think I was staying in the loop of what society is thinking about. In retrospect, it was really just the loudest 1% and didn’t represent what anyone I know in real life was talking about.

altano 5y ago
The internet in general is prone to “the loudest 1%” problem, but Twitter is something special where it’s the craziest and loudest 0.01%. It’s so sad because all JS related discourse moved to Twitter at some point so I keep trying to make it work, but have to keep quitting for my sanity’s sake.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Was JS Twitter itself toxic? Because if not I don't see why you wouldn't just follow the relevant accounts and not see any of the stuff the article talks about.
  - lhnz 5y ago
    Yes. A lot of JS Twitter is extremely toxic.
    - g00gler 5y ago
      It’s absolutely insane and there’s really no reason for it. Controversy with the angular team or high profile developers — why? I’ve been off social media for years but I’d hear about it second hand from coworkers.
    - hallway_monitor 5y ago
      A lot of JS is extremely toxic.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        JS is actually okay. Horrible, horrible language, but like PHP there's some decent stuff in it. The only bad things about JS (other than JS itself) are the "write everything in four layers of frameworks" (but that's more a webdev thing than a JavaScript thing) and "four billion node dependencies that re-implement JavaScript built-ins" (bad, but not "extremely toxic").
  - altano 5y ago
    Yes, even JS Twitter is extremely toxic by my definition. But more importantly there is no group of people you can follow to keep the ratio of JS related content above even 10%. It’s not a reasonable way of following a topic.
    - j4yav 5y ago
tunesmith 5y ago
What do you use to check news every day?
- leesalminen 5y ago
  News.Google.com for a max of 30 minutes per day.
- underseacables 5y ago
  Hckrnews.com
- iliekcomputers 5y ago
  Taking a step back, do we really _need_ to check news every day? I read The Economist which is weekly, and I haven't felt like I'm uninformed much.
  - ptk 5y ago
    This is me too. And the me of 2 years ago would have been aghast about that. But I now finding myself missing pretty major news cycles regularly because eventually you learn to trust the fact that you can "catch up" at any point in time. I've really enjoyed letting news happen and not getting caught up in the immediacy of it.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    I've stopped. I check my local news, I still read HN daily, but I don't watch or read any TV or national news. 99.9% of it has zero impact on my day-to-day life.
  - all2 5y ago
    Replying to throwawayboise: I've done the same exact thing. I find very little usefulness in the national and international posturing, blaming, and virtue signaling that makes up most broadcast, cable, and print news.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    I didn't need to before Covid, but our government decided that it was okay to change rules (drastically), on a day-to-day basis, then when they got called out for changing them with less than 24 hour warning, decided that 48 hours was fine. If you didn't follow the news, you could get caught up and have to pay a not insubstantial fine, or more realistically you were planning to do something that was deemed safe enough some days earlier. An older example: if you didn't pay attention to the news on 9/11 you risked being stuck in the airport for a very long time. So yeah, there are situations where you do need to follow the news. Not often, but two global events have happened in my lifetime (3 if you count the fall of the Berlin wall) where you really did need to pay attention to the news. Maybe some sort of exponential back-of is warrented? Say you check the news and if nothing relevant happend you check in again the next day, then you skip a day, then two, etc. When an event happens where you need to follow the news (say a local flood), you go back to an hourly checkup. The final thing I have noticed is that the news you need to follow are mostly very local. What happens in other countries is, relatively speaking, of no importance to you.
Blikkentrekker 5y ago
I think a big thing is that Twitter can often repræsent itself as though what many outside of it call “Twitter views” are more mainstream than they are. 4chan, for instance, also comes with rather niche views, but does not attempt to convince one that it's views are anything but niche. Being immersed in Twitter, and many other websites known to create “filter bubbles”, eventually might make one believe it is the mainstream. In fact, it is not so dissimilar from how I think U.S.A. culture works; it is often noted how often inhabitants inside of it loose perspective of how idiosyncratic U.S.A. cultural memes are nothing more than that, as the people there often phrase them as though they be of a more global, even timeless nature.
prasenjit_pro 5y ago
At a personal perspective it is best to quit most social media channels including Twitter for a daily surfing craving because only a handful people whom you care & whom you matter the most would be there waiting on social media. Most of my closed people miss the personal touch, some free time jumping around to the ground and spending time at some pals place and hate to talk on Social media while we can do many more things out of the Internet box. It's what matters. History of our online usage can be used by advertisers but not by our loved ones.

throwaway98797 5y ago

Curate aggressively. A gun is dangerous. Twitter is dangerous. Both are useful if used appropriately with the right training and safeguards.

altano 5y ago
This is exactly the problem: Twitter, unlike other platforms like Reddit and even Facebook, make curation impossible. Want to follow someone who posts a lot of interesting things about JS? Be prepared to see posts they like about curry poodles. Oh here’s some worst-in-class topic recommendations barfed out by depressed ML, and you can’t turn them off. What do you mean you don’t like Roseanne Nostalgia? Here are some Binky The Clown Stock Tips.
- dewey 5y ago
  > make curation impossible You can just use any of the numerous third party clients that have a sorted timeline and don't inject random posts in your timeline.
  - brewdad 5y ago
    It's not the random posts, it's that the people you follow on Twitter are human (hopefully) and will post about things outside the core reason for following them. I follow a bunch of sports writers on Twitter to keep up on my favorite teams and fantasy stuff. Invariably, on slow news days, they will post about their kids, cats, the weather, anything other than the teams they cover. I generally don't mind but will unfollow if the balance gets too far out of whack or if they get political in an untenable way. YMMV as far as where to draw the line between content and fluff.
    - dewey 5y ago
      Fair enough, I was referring to the "Be prepared to see posts they like about" part of the argument where Twitter shows you random likes of people you follow in your stream.
  - 5y ago

elliekelly 5y ago

I was hoping the article would end with the author deleting her twitter account altogether but it seems she recently “straw-tweeted” a link to this article: https://mobile.twitter.com/CaitlinPacific/status/1412091950618976258 https://mobile.twitter.com/CaitlinPacific/status/14120919506...

wizzwizz4 5y ago
I suspect she thought it'd be more helpful to share that with Twitter users than delete her account. (But I do share the sentiment – why keep an account with a system that's doing you harm?)

pixxel 5y ago

I quit Twitter around 2014/5. I couldn’t figure out why people were posting about inane topics (what I ate for breakfast etc.) and not talking about subjects that matter (politics, corruption etc.). In particular why weren’t celebrities with huge followings not talking about important issues. Well, how wrong was I. I’d love to go back to that time.

0xdeadb00f 5y ago
I've heard the exact opposite critisim of twitter; that it is too politicised and there's too much USpol
- majewsky 5y ago
  That's what GP meant.

swader999 5y ago

I find twitter really good for staying abreast of local emergencies. Fire in the area, road closed etc. All the EMS are on it and post near real time updates when stuff is going on.

tifadg1 5y ago

I never found the appeal. If something important is posted, it'll be picked up by everyone, otherwise it's 99% likely noise, and not even the interesting kind.

axaxs 5y ago
Same. I don't really use social media, but see the appeal of some. FB for staying in touch with family and friends. Insta for sharing photos. Heck even TikTok looks like a lot of fun. Twitter just seems like narcissistic self important people yelling over each other. Guess I never figured that one out.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

captainmuon 5y ago

Besides my personal account which I rarely use, I collaborate on another account that is mostly write-only, to be honest. Social media is good if you want to spread a message and reach other interested people. It is also good to find interesting stuff as a distraction. Social networks used to be good to represent yourself, to keep contact with friends, and to meet new real people around you. It's really sad nothing like that exists anymore.

xg15 5y ago

Out of couriosity, with all the attempts to create a "healthy" social network, has anyone attempted to build one that has a defined downtime for the entire network? (I'm thinking at least a consecutive week each month, possibly more) After all, a large part of "withdrawal" seems to be FOMO, i.e. the feeling that everyone else is having the time of their life while you are missing out. However, if you can be sure nothing is happening because the network is shut down, FOMO might be greatly reduced.

batch12 5y ago
Interesting. This reminds me of the bank of time I used to have to manage on a BBS. Imagine being limited to 30/60 minutes a day. Would that make interactions more valuable?
david_allison 5y ago
https://www.sundayy.app/ https://www.sundayy.app/ does this

tayo42 5y ago

I guess the author was kept around by the need to comment and interact. Seems like an aspect that I don't hear about to much. Usually people seem to talk about scrolling, consuming and time wasting on these sites. I can kind of relate to this behavior.(even here I'm commenting, sharing my pointless thoughts lol) I guess she just has a need and strong desire to share thoughts and write them down. Considering she seems to be enough of an author to be published writing is something she likes to do. Twitter would be another outlet for that. Is that so bad, as long as its not interfering with the rest of her life. Seems like she still is writing long articles regularly. I feel like i got wrapped up in the need to comment too. I did do some similar experiments on my self. The trigger for this was political stuff. A little more drastically i went and deleted my twitter account, to my surprise the account is actually fully gone after 30 days. I never felt like putting the effort to get an account back so that habit is pretty much gone. Facebook doesn't have much of a network for me anymore, feels like its dying so it doesn't get much use from me except for linking with instagram. Instagram i only use as a photo sharing place and to see artwork, not really a commenter there. Disconnecting from reddit was interesting, i found my self still wanting to comment, and make throwaway jokes. Nothing thoughtful, dumb shit i thought would be funny. Sometimes I would see a small comment suggesting something wrong and wanted to them know. It feels like weird behavior. Overall i guess i wonder why we make comments, like what drives this behavior. Then why most other people don't participate. I think only 1% or something of an online community actually contribute. These comments seem to be somewhere between actually sharing thoughts and socializing but not quite either.

throwawaysea 5y ago
I think a big part of it is that it feels like we are losing our chance to influence society. That can come back to bite us when people go to vote, based on what they’ve learned on social media. So it creates an urgency to throw something out there so that we aren’t bystanders to the formation of societal opinions.
allenu 5y ago
I think we make comments because we want our thoughts and opinions to be validated by someone else. With Twitter, you have an endless list of trending topics to discuss, and an endless list of people to discuss them. In real life, you have to bring up a topic and provide some context surrounding it before you can even share your opinion on it. Even then, your conversation partner may not even be interested in what you have to say. But on social media, someone out there must be interested in your thoughts, and is likely well-versed in it (they're also tweeting actively), so you post it. You get a 'like' or a response for your thought or opinion. You feel good. The thing is, opinions require zero energy or effort. You just have them. I think that's part of what makes it addictive. You don't have to do any work, just share your thoughts, and you'll get feedback from the system. That feedback feels good. With enough feedback, you're soon sharing the most pithy thoughts, or most banal facts just to get another hit.

lovelyviking 5y ago

Oh ... Twitter! How about those who never joined the Twitter? Should I join the Twitter? Serious question. Why to join it in the first place? What are the reasons to join it?

FilMo 5y ago
I don't use Twitter nor Instagram. I'm not a social media addict. I always can join my friends by phone. Or if I need to meet new people, I can easily find communication or get a gf at one of the top rated hookup sites (https://www.besthookup-sites.com/ https://www.besthookup-sites.com/). So there is no need to join all those junk social media and stick there for a long time sorting someone's else garbage.

bastard_op 5y ago

I get annoyed every time people post twitter links here and wish they'd stop. Since twits requires javascript (to infect/track everyone) now, I just will not. It's like the old paywall site argument, will you sell your soul?

themodelplumber 5y ago

I guess as long as you're not addicted(?), Twitter is a great research tool for specific kinds of things. For example open source intelligence topics. Or general learning about a given topic. Tons of writers and journalists use Twitter, so if you're interested in higher-quality takes on a given topic, or just updates on e.g. author interviews and upcoming events, it can be a really good resource. I tested Twitter while doing some research on astrology and found that some of the most on-target astrology advice I could find was found in the Twitter Topic for my ascendant sign (different from the typical sun sign used in astrology). It was far better than some of the paid services I tested. Very subjective-anecdotal (I ended up making my own lists based on what was interesting/useful to me) but I think it shows that it helps to consciously examine what Twitter is good at. Lists can be really good too. Like this one for Open Source CAD: https://twitter.com/i/lists/963793700190146560 https://twitter.com/i/lists/963793700190146560

i_haz_rabies 5y ago

Caitlin Flanagan is one of the most entertaining writers around.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

They hide the tweet counts for a reason. It's hard to respect the "Verified" users if you knew they all have tweet counts that when divided by hours since they joined the platform it comes out at over 1 tweet an hour every hour for 9+ years. You can check this yourself using the wayback machine to see all their counts from before it was hidden. Pretty much every popular personality on Twitter is hopelessly addicted to it and you realize how little value their views have when they must be staring at it for hours and hours a day.

danso 5y ago
But tweet counts aren’t hidden? In the iOS app, they show up at the top when you scroll down a user timeline. On the web app, it’s always visible on the sticky header of a user’s profile/timeline
majewsky 5y ago
Twitter users at this scale often have content teams that post for them. Also, 1/hour is 24/day which you can easily reach by making 2-3 original posts and then spamming out a few short replies to comments. Should not take more than 1 or 2 hours of your day if you find your proper groove.

sys_64738 5y ago

The only utility I ever got from Twitter was negotiating favorable rates for Xfinity via the Comcast Twitter handle. Otherwise it feels like a complete waste of time.

u678u 5y ago

I've gone in a cycle through different Social Media sites, after a year or so I manage to get the strength to leave but usually end up on a different site. One thing is I always delete my account after 3-6 months and create a new one, following different people/groups etc.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

It was time for Twitter rehab. It was to be a battle of wills between one aging, chemo-addled brain and So the real story is she had chemo therapy at some point, presumably for cancer, and was still impaired and during presumably her recovery, Twitter became too big a thing in her life. Either out of prosaic misattribution or intentionally creating drama for the sake of writing a story, she frames it as an addiction she needed to beat. This really had nothing to do with Twitter. If Twitter hadn't existed, there would be some other thing she got stuck on during recovery. Twitter was the right amount of mental engagement for her during recovery when harder things were beyond her reach. When she was more recovered, she recognized it was time to move on and do other things. And she did so. The end.

nickkell 5y ago
I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. She mentions chemo once in passing, but not when she went through it. Her profile says she joined Twitter in 2009, so quite a long time. Anyway, what do you think she'd be addicted to if not Twitter? Crack cocaine?
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Anyway, what do you think she'd be addicted to if not Twitter? Crack cocaine? Maybe crossword puzzles, which were the go to back in the day for people who liked words.

fruityrudy 5y ago

For tech it’s very important for staying up to date. There is a lot of content there that is not elsewhere. The best strategy is to block keywords to avoid all the social justice and politics. I just wished they allowed blocking more than 200 words.

sylens 5y ago

A bit from Bo Burnham's new special "Inside" has really resonated with me. He essentially says that people are increasingly treating real life as some sort of coal mine - a place where they go to extract something (an experience, an opinion, whatever) and then bring it back to the surface to share and use in the digital world.

zikduruqe 5y ago
It used to be that art imitated life. It is now that life imitates art.
throwaway98797 5y ago
This has always been the case. To live for onself onto one self is hard. Much easier to share your life and convince yourself it has meaning through external validation. There’s rarely peace in one owns head. The hollow solace lies outside of us, with true peace hard to achieve, if achievable at all.

Popegaf 5y ago

Twitter is about the worst platform I've seen. It's worse than all the "chan" websites and I don't know how they are allowed to continue. The only major difference I can see between the two are the political and ideological opposites. On the chans it's A-OK to post about wiping out some "inferior race", while on Twitter wiping out or mistreating men is accepted. All kinds of kink porn is easily found on Twitter (which was a big surprise), people confess to crimes, harass each other, dox and send death threats to "the other side", spread fake news, falsely accuse each other with real world consequences, and so much more. Yet somehow, Twitter is a standard app on devices, newspapers, governments, underage kids and grandpas use it. Is it just money?

majewsky 5y ago
Your fallacy is assuming that Twitter is the same thing for everyone. I have none of what you describe in my timeline, mostly because I don't go out of my way to search for this stuff. Your argument is not unlike "why is the government supporting the printing of books when some books contain inflammatory speech and bomb building manuals" (though obviously not a 1:1 equivalence because books don't have algorithmic recommendations by themselves).

underseacables 5y ago

Actual title: You Really Need to Quit Twitter Not that I disagree, but it is a rule

eimrine 5y ago

I have not get started with Twitter on my very first it use because I have subscribed to roughly hundred accounts a day, maybe more. They were mostly relable to my business. My account has became shadowbanned and my posts (all 10 with unique photos) has marked as suspicious but only for others. Maybe it is because I have written something about ncov-19. Also I hoped I can tweet from SMS without need to have access to web - but I could not setup this option, maybe I do not know something. I decided to do nothing but if SMS option is possible in some way I will try to unlock my account to start use it for promoting my business.

Arete314159 5y ago

I hate twitter and I'm also addicted to it. The reason I'm on it is because a lot of the best info on Covid this year breaks on Twitter weeks or even months before it's common knowledge.

foobarbazetc 5y ago

I quit Twitter on March 20th and it was the best thing I’ve done in a long, long time. The funny thing was that it starts sending you random notifications from people you don’t even follow or have the bell on for as a dark pattern to get you to come back. What I realized is — like how I quit reading the news many years ago — everything on Twitter is pointless and ephemeral. From one outrage cycle to the next, never relenting. Everyone always mad about some meaningless minutiae. If it was actually important it would surface by some other means so I never missed anything. Then I’d go outside and everyone’s living their lives like Twitter doesn’t exist. It’s easier to do than you think. Lock your account, turn off notifications for the whole app, and do literally anything else.