11 ms·

Twitter made me feel: some combination of violated, indignant, numb, inferior, empty, powerless, disappointed, embarassed, furious, annoyed, and infuriated.

b20000 5y ago
sounds like facebook
BurningFrog 5y ago
In many ways, Twitter is as life itself.
leesec 5y ago
Cool. It mostly made me happy
- danschumann 5y ago
  If I had to include happiness emotions... I guess getting some of the videos made me feel valued a bit, maybe thankful now and again? Maybe feeling successful if I pwned a pleb, but these are empty thrills.
unclebucknasty 5y ago
Sounds like you had the political/current events Twitter experience. It's pretty much tailor-made to evoke all of those emotions.
dnautics 5y ago
I used to feel that way, but I aggressively moderated who I follow in a purge, and being selective about who I add as follows. It feels like it's easier to marie-kondo people I don't care for anymore in twitter since there's little-to-no-expectation that I know anyone on twitter, and for me, anyways, twitter is a much more pleasant experience than any other social network has been.
- tills13 5y ago
  The only issue with this is you create your own echo chamber. imo it's why conservatives feel so emboldened, recently -- they have surrounded themselves with people who agree with them making their "movement" seem larger than it actually is.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    I actively try to not create an echo chamber, but sure. I suppose it's something that people do.
  - packetlost 5y ago
    That goes both ways. The hyper progressive echo chambers are just as problematic. Echo champers are problematic in general, it doesn't matter the political leanings.
    - danschumann 5y ago
      Because echo chamber is distant from the rest of people. Distant-> withdrawn or numb ( both anger emotions )
  - sergers 5y ago
    i think that goes for any of the movements today... where its the silent majority, who dont want to say anything in face of backlash of small few with big voices. not just conservatives
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    > they have surrounded themselves with people who agree with them making their "movement" seem larger than it actually is. At least in the U.S., I think that’s more attributable to their enormously disproportionate political power.
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    I don't use Twitter for politics. It's a cesspool where the biggest assholes win.
nostromo 5y ago
May I ask why you used it then?
- danschumann 5y ago
  I couldn't know what it produced at the time. Keyword is "used".
- fullshark 5y ago
  Why do political junkies keep the outrage drip going? Some combination of philosophical purpose, self-flattery, comfort amid chaos, and sometimes enlightenment.
Perizors 5y ago
That was Instagram for me. Twitter has been much less frustating and mucho mire useful for me.
juancampa 5y ago
Here's a tip on how to make the best out of Twitter: unfollow anyone that makes you feel that way. Think about it, it's not Twitter per se, it's the people you follow, and that's under your control.
- 535188B17C93743 5y ago
  Until they start suggesting friends of friend's tweets. Or random trending/suggested tweets. Or you might like your friend's tweets but get fed with all of their garbage "liked" content and can't filter that out.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    A tip: This doesn’t seem to show up for me unless I scroll so long that Twitter runs out of things to show me. If you’re seeing a lot of friends-of-friends content, you might be scrolling too long or not following enough people you actually want to hear from.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    You can switch to the chronological timeline and it filters all of that out. The only “suggested” content is retweets and the usual ads. Historically Twitter was notorious for reverting this setting, but at least for the last year or so I haven’t had to reenable it.
  - vmarsy 5y ago
    > but get fed with all of their garbage "liked" content and can't filter that out. I definitely filter those out. About once every 6 months the tweets "liked" by people I follow pop up again, it's usually very noticable as the feeds quality turns down dramatically. To get rid of those, I do the "..." > "I don't like this tweet" > "show fewer likes from XYZ" on 2 or 3 tweets, and they're all gone for another few months. It's not ideal, a settings menu where you can disable those permanently would be far better, but it works.
- xwdv 5y ago
  I did this, and in the end – I quit.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Twitter and largely social media encourages echo chambers. I try to be a contrarian on HN but in some threads, especially around social justice and political threads, it definitely has a tendency to become one. When 10 people are agreeing vicariously and there is a sense that any dissent is crushed, time to be the person playing devil’s advocate and challenge them. This can happen in a small context and it usually is harmless. But on Twitter, you’re going to feel the weight of the world when you go against the grain. The mob will chase after you. They’ll become more powerful as bystanders join. You will be crushed. Others will take a note and feel the chilling effect.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  HN seems to be the least echo-chamber groupthink general population around excluding a few topics where one position is particularly popular. I think this is mostly because of the high quality moderation of dang and associated cultural norms here.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Agreed it’s probably the best discussion forum. My point was that even the best has the tendency to become an echo-chamber. It’s worth reading Christakis’s 2009 book “Connected: Surprising power of social networks”. It’s mind blowing that social networks are not regulated to some form. I don’t mean censorship but meme-acceleration and propagation of information needs to be curbed. Unfortunately it goes against engagement metrics and will never happen.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  It is entirely possible for the experiment of putting every user in the network into a giant echo chamber with relatively low walls, no real concept of "subtopics" or "forums," and no moderation but self-moderation (which does not scale when thousands of individuals choose to spend a scant five of their seconds haranguing you)... ... can fail. As in, there's no guarantee the system so designed is good, or healthy, or net-gain valuable.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
hvs 5y ago
I used to feel this way. Then I unfollowed all political/current events/venting Twitter and started following creators and retrocomputing types. It's very enjoyable now.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Made you, you mean like, forced you? In any case you can't voluntarily join an emotional rollecoaster and then complain that it's moving too fast
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/make#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/make#English
spaniard89277 5y ago
Twitter didn't make you feel anything, it's the people who uses twitter that made that to you. Maybe we just should accept that we are not cognitively equipped to deal with all that comes with social media. It's just too much for our brains, and having a sane relationship with them requires an active effort to moderate who you follow. Yes, they optimize por clicks and views, yet Twitter at least allows you total control of what are you consuming. So if there's any social media out there that has both utility and allows control, it's Twitter. FB it's another level of shady shit we can discuss another day.
- geebee 5y ago
  I agree, but the format and limitations of twitter are unusually prone to degraded public discourse.
rgrieselhuber 5y ago
Intentionally
KoftaBob 5y ago
Sounds like you follow crappy pages.
- danschumann 5y ago
  Does an individual voter have a responsibility to know also the disgusting events of modern times or only the happy ones? Twitter seemed to overweight discuss-ting events and angry events. Maybe cuz I avoid such things on other platforms, I used twitter to stay informed on the darker side. Sure, my fault. Disregard this whole thread! Lol.
hi5eyes 5y ago
this in, man that engages with toxicity finds a toxic feed
geebee 5y ago
I've never written a tweet. I avoid comments too much. I do use it to follow reading lists from a few journalists, writers, academics, and artists. There are much better ways, but twitter is what everyone uses. Comments are often terrible. You know the kind of comment where you have absolutely no idea what is being discussed or why, only that it has made someone very angry? Twitter is the land of such comments, devoid of anything other than hostility or snark (for a mile example, a gif of "double face palm, when one face palm isn't enough" kind of thing - you really have no idea that the person is responding to or what their thought are).
- eequah9L 5y ago
  If they put their objections in words, they run the risk of entering an actual discussion, which would force them to defend their view. Much easier to just post a meme or an emoticon as a sort of a dog-whistle. Can't argue with a double-facepalm!
- spiderice 5y ago
  It's hilarious to me that people actually put up with a social network like this. Everyone in this thread is talking about how all you need to do is unfollow half of people you see tweets from, never read comments, put in a ton of work to get your feed exactly how you want it, etc.. and only then does Twitter become bearable. Yet people still defend it, even after admitting to all that. It's like getting a 5 course meal of poison food, and defending the meal because the dessert was delicious, and "all you have to do" is not eat the rest of the meal.
sanderjd 5y ago
Honestly kind of curious: are furious and infuriated not synonyms for you?
- danschumann 5y ago
  Feelings wheel, my friend. Jealous and Furious are similar, jealous is when you want someone else to not have something, and furious is when they come for your stuff. Infuriated and annoyed are linked, and infuriated is when you get so annoyed you start yelling back. I'm trying to make all the emotional categories more distinct in my philosphy, recently posted a video as such https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfZwxLUrlrk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfZwxLUrlrk
  - sanderjd 5y ago
    Interesting! I don't really relate to those definitions - furious and jealous don't seem similar to me, nor do infuriated and annoyed seem particularly similar - but thanks for the explanation.
    - danschumann 5y ago
      Most of the time people say they're curious on the internet, they're actually feeling dismissive, but just need more ammo to be able to dismiss the person. Which makes it skepticism, not curiosity.
      - sanderjd 5y ago
        I was both curious and skeptical about this. I appreciated the explanation which successfully sated my curiosity, though I remain skeptical. But I also have a new interesting thing to consider, to compare and contrast my thinking against. Moving forward I'll be wondering whether any fury I feel is more akin to jealousy or annoyance and that will be a new and interesting lens to look at things through. I really was curious! But that isn't mutually exclusive with skepticism.
        5y ago
jader201 5y ago
I feel none of these, because I use Twitter as an RSS feed of companies/websites I’m interested in seeing updates from. I don’t post, and I don’t follow people. If anyone is feeling any of what the OP has felt, strongly encourage changing how you use it. Nothing is worth this.
Waterluvian 5y ago
I think Twitter can amplify what we seek (whether consciously or not). I found the complete opposite: it built tremendous confidence as I went from 0 to thousands of followers who were interested in my parenting+comedy niche.
that_guy_iain 5y ago
What I did was stop following tech people and started following comedy people. It really made Twitter a much more fun place.
par 5y ago
i agree with this, and it's not a hot take. It just describes what twitter does to people.

b20000 5y ago

sounds like facebook

BurningFrog 5y ago

In many ways, Twitter is as life itself.

leesec 5y ago

Cool. It mostly made me happy

danschumann 5y ago
If I had to include happiness emotions... I guess getting some of the videos made me feel valued a bit, maybe thankful now and again? Maybe feeling successful if I pwned a pleb, but these are empty thrills.

unclebucknasty 5y ago

Sounds like you had the political/current events Twitter experience. It's pretty much tailor-made to evoke all of those emotions.

dnautics 5y ago

I used to feel that way, but I aggressively moderated who I follow in a purge, and being selective about who I add as follows. It feels like it's easier to marie-kondo people I don't care for anymore in twitter since there's little-to-no-expectation that I know anyone on twitter, and for me, anyways, twitter is a much more pleasant experience than any other social network has been.

tills13 5y ago
The only issue with this is you create your own echo chamber. imo it's why conservatives feel so emboldened, recently -- they have surrounded themselves with people who agree with them making their "movement" seem larger than it actually is.
- dnautics 5y ago
  I actively try to not create an echo chamber, but sure. I suppose it's something that people do.
- packetlost 5y ago
  That goes both ways. The hyper progressive echo chambers are just as problematic. Echo champers are problematic in general, it doesn't matter the political leanings.
  - danschumann 5y ago
    Because echo chamber is distant from the rest of people. Distant-> withdrawn or numb ( both anger emotions )
- sergers 5y ago
  i think that goes for any of the movements today... where its the silent majority, who dont want to say anything in face of backlash of small few with big voices. not just conservatives
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > they have surrounded themselves with people who agree with them making their "movement" seem larger than it actually is. At least in the U.S., I think that’s more attributable to their enormously disproportionate political power.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  I don't use Twitter for politics. It's a cesspool where the biggest assholes win.

nostromo 5y ago

May I ask why you used it then?

danschumann 5y ago
I couldn't know what it produced at the time. Keyword is "used".
fullshark 5y ago
Why do political junkies keep the outrage drip going? Some combination of philosophical purpose, self-flattery, comfort amid chaos, and sometimes enlightenment.

Perizors 5y ago

That was Instagram for me. Twitter has been much less frustating and mucho mire useful for me.

juancampa 5y ago

Here's a tip on how to make the best out of Twitter: unfollow anyone that makes you feel that way. Think about it, it's not Twitter per se, it's the people you follow, and that's under your control.

535188B17C93743 5y ago
Until they start suggesting friends of friend's tweets. Or random trending/suggested tweets. Or you might like your friend's tweets but get fed with all of their garbage "liked" content and can't filter that out.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  A tip: This doesn’t seem to show up for me unless I scroll so long that Twitter runs out of things to show me. If you’re seeing a lot of friends-of-friends content, you might be scrolling too long or not following enough people you actually want to hear from.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  You can switch to the chronological timeline and it filters all of that out. The only “suggested” content is retweets and the usual ads. Historically Twitter was notorious for reverting this setting, but at least for the last year or so I haven’t had to reenable it.
- vmarsy 5y ago
  > but get fed with all of their garbage "liked" content and can't filter that out. I definitely filter those out. About once every 6 months the tweets "liked" by people I follow pop up again, it's usually very noticable as the feeds quality turns down dramatically. To get rid of those, I do the "..." > "I don't like this tweet" > "show fewer likes from XYZ" on 2 or 3 tweets, and they're all gone for another few months. It's not ideal, a settings menu where you can disable those permanently would be far better, but it works.
xwdv 5y ago
I did this, and in the end – I quit.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Twitter and largely social media encourages echo chambers. I try to be a contrarian on HN but in some threads, especially around social justice and political threads, it definitely has a tendency to become one. When 10 people are agreeing vicariously and there is a sense that any dissent is crushed, time to be the person playing devil’s advocate and challenge them. This can happen in a small context and it usually is harmless. But on Twitter, you’re going to feel the weight of the world when you go against the grain. The mob will chase after you. They’ll become more powerful as bystanders join. You will be crushed. Others will take a note and feel the chilling effect.

colechristensen 5y ago
HN seems to be the least echo-chamber groupthink general population around excluding a few topics where one position is particularly popular. I think this is mostly because of the high quality moderation of dang and associated cultural norms here.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Agreed it’s probably the best discussion forum. My point was that even the best has the tendency to become an echo-chamber. It’s worth reading Christakis’s 2009 book “Connected: Surprising power of social networks”. It’s mind blowing that social networks are not regulated to some form. I don’t mean censorship but meme-acceleration and propagation of information needs to be curbed. Unfortunately it goes against engagement metrics and will never happen.
shadowgovt 5y ago
It is entirely possible for the experiment of putting every user in the network into a giant echo chamber with relatively low walls, no real concept of "subtopics" or "forums," and no moderation but self-moderation (which does not scale when thousands of individuals choose to spend a scant five of their seconds haranguing you)... ... can fail. As in, there's no guarantee the system so designed is good, or healthy, or net-gain valuable.
Nasrudith 5y ago

hvs 5y ago

I used to feel this way. Then I unfollowed all political/current events/venting Twitter and started following creators and retrocomputing types. It's very enjoyable now.

cblconfederate 5y ago

Made you, you mean like, forced you? In any case you can't voluntarily join an emotional rollecoaster and then complain that it's moving too fast

ARandomerDude 5y ago
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/make#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/make#English

spaniard89277 5y ago

Twitter didn't make you feel anything, it's the people who uses twitter that made that to you. Maybe we just should accept that we are not cognitively equipped to deal with all that comes with social media. It's just too much for our brains, and having a sane relationship with them requires an active effort to moderate who you follow. Yes, they optimize por clicks and views, yet Twitter at least allows you total control of what are you consuming. So if there's any social media out there that has both utility and allows control, it's Twitter. FB it's another level of shady shit we can discuss another day.

geebee 5y ago
I agree, but the format and limitations of twitter are unusually prone to degraded public discourse.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago

Intentionally

KoftaBob 5y ago

Sounds like you follow crappy pages.

danschumann 5y ago
Does an individual voter have a responsibility to know also the disgusting events of modern times or only the happy ones? Twitter seemed to overweight discuss-ting events and angry events. Maybe cuz I avoid such things on other platforms, I used twitter to stay informed on the darker side. Sure, my fault. Disregard this whole thread! Lol.

hi5eyes 5y ago

this in, man that engages with toxicity finds a toxic feed

geebee 5y ago

I've never written a tweet. I avoid comments too much. I do use it to follow reading lists from a few journalists, writers, academics, and artists. There are much better ways, but twitter is what everyone uses. Comments are often terrible. You know the kind of comment where you have absolutely no idea what is being discussed or why, only that it has made someone very angry? Twitter is the land of such comments, devoid of anything other than hostility or snark (for a mile example, a gif of "double face palm, when one face palm isn't enough" kind of thing - you really have no idea that the person is responding to or what their thought are).

eequah9L 5y ago
If they put their objections in words, they run the risk of entering an actual discussion, which would force them to defend their view. Much easier to just post a meme or an emoticon as a sort of a dog-whistle. Can't argue with a double-facepalm!
spiderice 5y ago
It's hilarious to me that people actually put up with a social network like this. Everyone in this thread is talking about how all you need to do is unfollow half of people you see tweets from, never read comments, put in a ton of work to get your feed exactly how you want it, etc.. and only then does Twitter become bearable. Yet people still defend it, even after admitting to all that. It's like getting a 5 course meal of poison food, and defending the meal because the dessert was delicious, and "all you have to do" is not eat the rest of the meal.

sanderjd 5y ago

Honestly kind of curious: are furious and infuriated not synonyms for you?

danschumann 5y ago
Feelings wheel, my friend. Jealous and Furious are similar, jealous is when you want someone else to not have something, and furious is when they come for your stuff. Infuriated and annoyed are linked, and infuriated is when you get so annoyed you start yelling back. I'm trying to make all the emotional categories more distinct in my philosphy, recently posted a video as such https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfZwxLUrlrk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfZwxLUrlrk
- sanderjd 5y ago
  Interesting! I don't really relate to those definitions - furious and jealous don't seem similar to me, nor do infuriated and annoyed seem particularly similar - but thanks for the explanation.
  - danschumann 5y ago
    Most of the time people say they're curious on the internet, they're actually feeling dismissive, but just need more ammo to be able to dismiss the person. Which makes it skepticism, not curiosity.
    - sanderjd 5y ago
      I was both curious and skeptical about this. I appreciated the explanation which successfully sated my curiosity, though I remain skeptical. But I also have a new interesting thing to consider, to compare and contrast my thinking against. Moving forward I'll be wondering whether any fury I feel is more akin to jealousy or annoyance and that will be a new and interesting lens to look at things through. I really was curious! But that isn't mutually exclusive with skepticism.
      - 5y ago

jader201 5y ago

I feel none of these, because I use Twitter as an RSS feed of companies/websites I’m interested in seeing updates from. I don’t post, and I don’t follow people. If anyone is feeling any of what the OP has felt, strongly encourage changing how you use it. Nothing is worth this.

Waterluvian 5y ago

I think Twitter can amplify what we seek (whether consciously or not). I found the complete opposite: it built tremendous confidence as I went from 0 to thousands of followers who were interested in my parenting+comedy niche.

that_guy_iain 5y ago

What I did was stop following tech people and started following comedy people. It really made Twitter a much more fun place.

par 5y ago

i agree with this, and it's not a hot take. It just describes what twitter does to people.