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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
by 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 agoI 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 agoI 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.
- nickkell 5y agoI got the feeling she wanted to write something pithy in response to current events (understandable as she's a good writer), but it was eating up her time. She mentions the site effectively stopped her reading books. It's also bizarre that people need to share every private thought and action with the world. An author died and she re-read their book. How much of that impulse stemmed from a inform the public about it?