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> Everyone there is trying to push its personal fight Unfollow those people. Twitter can be a good place for discussion, but you have to take control of your

> Everyone there is trying to push its personal fight Unfollow those people. Twitter can be a good place for discussion, but you have to take control of your follow list. I think a lot of people end up following the most prolific Tweeters in their domain rather than the most interesting (who often post infrequently). The prolific Tweeters reach for drama to bait people into engagement. If you don’t make a point of unfollowing the empty drama-producing Twitter users, your timeline will eventually fill up with their drama.

photochemsyn 5y ago
I fail to understand how a format that limits 'discussion' to a few sentences at most per post can be a good medium for anything other than dumbed-down one-liners. Even the most basic format for expository discussion, the simple paragraph, structured as introduction - content + examples - conclusion, won't fit on Twitter. It's a format designed to eliminate nuance and discussion, not to promote it. That means using Twitter constantly makes people dumber, i.e. less able to follow a complex argument or look at an issue from multiple points of view. Someone who'se been Twitterized and Facebooked is someone whose communication skills have been reduced to one-liner blurbs and who lives in a closed siloed environment.
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  See also: the increase in bad pun tweets with more followers. I don’t mind bad puns, but I cannot unsee this.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  I used to think that was the case too, but it’s not universally, it depends on the person. For some people, Twitter’s forced short-form focuses their content, cuts out all the bs, and reduces it down to its essence. It prevents them from being overly wordy, and is one of the best available antidotes to modern information overload. And if the essence of subject is fundamentally nuanced, the twitter discussion still can be too, though it may take multiple tweets to address all of it (a tweet-storm). If a subject requires long-form, then people tend to write that in a blog post or a paper and link it on twitter, and then discuss whatever aspects of it their followers have questions about. But again you have to do what the OP article says, and only follow people with shared interests and who meaningfully engage with their followers, and don’t just use Twitter to broadcast stuff without then discussing it (eg accounts with less than 1000 followers).
  - photochemsyn 5y ago
    Perhaps there are some uses that make sense, in terms of weather reports or things like that. However, in terms of "reducing it down to its essence", some propaganda expert (Ivy Lee maybe, or others) of the 1930s said something like this: "Propaganda consists of taking a complex idea, simplifying it down to the point where a small child could understand it, and then repeating, repeating, repeating." Twitter is the ideal platform for that kind of approach, isn't it? I don't think it's healthy for people to spend a lot of time on Twitter for reasons like that.
    - SkyMarshal 5y ago
      Sure, but you have to follow the other advice of following people who are 1) subject matter experts and 2) engage with their followers regularly. Propagandists typically aren’t SME’s and don’t engage in discussions with their followers.
- crucialfelix 5y ago
  A lot of people write a series of tweets that reads like a short, high density essay. They are fun and informative. Discussion ensues easily. Often these are rough drafts on outline form for a blog post, or summaries of an existing one.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
One of the problems is that people have this innate inane drive to "be their whole selves" online these days. This leads to someone whose basketball commentary you enjoy also posting ragebait about the technology industry on the same account. I'd rather follow specific topics than whole people.

photochemsyn 5y ago

I fail to understand how a format that limits 'discussion' to a few sentences at most per post can be a good medium for anything other than dumbed-down one-liners. Even the most basic format for expository discussion, the simple paragraph, structured as introduction - content + examples - conclusion, won't fit on Twitter. It's a format designed to eliminate nuance and discussion, not to promote it. That means using Twitter constantly makes people dumber, i.e. less able to follow a complex argument or look at an issue from multiple points of view. Someone who'se been Twitterized and Facebooked is someone whose communication skills have been reduced to one-liner blurbs and who lives in a closed siloed environment.

mattgreenrocks 5y ago
See also: the increase in bad pun tweets with more followers. I don’t mind bad puns, but I cannot unsee this.
SkyMarshal 5y ago
I used to think that was the case too, but it’s not universally, it depends on the person. For some people, Twitter’s forced short-form focuses their content, cuts out all the bs, and reduces it down to its essence. It prevents them from being overly wordy, and is one of the best available antidotes to modern information overload. And if the essence of subject is fundamentally nuanced, the twitter discussion still can be too, though it may take multiple tweets to address all of it (a tweet-storm). If a subject requires long-form, then people tend to write that in a blog post or a paper and link it on twitter, and then discuss whatever aspects of it their followers have questions about. But again you have to do what the OP article says, and only follow people with shared interests and who meaningfully engage with their followers, and don’t just use Twitter to broadcast stuff without then discussing it (eg accounts with less than 1000 followers).
- photochemsyn 5y ago
  Perhaps there are some uses that make sense, in terms of weather reports or things like that. However, in terms of "reducing it down to its essence", some propaganda expert (Ivy Lee maybe, or others) of the 1930s said something like this: "Propaganda consists of taking a complex idea, simplifying it down to the point where a small child could understand it, and then repeating, repeating, repeating." Twitter is the ideal platform for that kind of approach, isn't it? I don't think it's healthy for people to spend a lot of time on Twitter for reasons like that.
  - SkyMarshal 5y ago
    Sure, but you have to follow the other advice of following people who are 1) subject matter experts and 2) engage with their followers regularly. Propagandists typically aren’t SME’s and don’t engage in discussions with their followers.
crucialfelix 5y ago
A lot of people write a series of tweets that reads like a short, high density essay. They are fun and informative. Discussion ensues easily. Often these are rough drafts on outline form for a blog post, or summaries of an existing one.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

One of the problems is that people have this innate inane drive to "be their whole selves" online these days. This leads to someone whose basketball commentary you enjoy also posting ragebait about the technology industry on the same account. I'd rather follow specific topics than whole people.