I think this is important enough to highlight. Tweets are very different from other forms of communication on the internet. You can see it even here on HN in th

I think this is important enough to highlight. Tweets are very different from other forms of communication on the internet. You can see it even here on HN in the comments section. Twitter railroads the discussion into a particular type by the form of discourse. Each tweet, whether it's meant to or not, is more akin to a self contained atomic statement then a paragraph relating to a whole. This steers tweets into short statements of opinion masquerading as humble, genuine statements of fact. Often times each tweet is a simple idea that's given more weight because it's presented in tweet form. An extreme example is the joke thread of listing out each letter of the alphabet [0] [1]. When tweets are responding to another tweet, it comes off as one of the two extreme choices of being a shallow affirmation or a combative "hot take". Compare this with the comments section here. Responses are, for the most part, respectful. Comments tend to address multiple points at once, often interweaving them together. When text is quoted, it's not meant as a hot take but a refresher on the specific point that they're addressing. The HN comments section has its problems but, to me, it's night and day from Twitter. I basically completely avoid responding to most everything on Twitter for this reason. Anything other than a superficial "good job" or "wow" is taken as a challenge and usually gets a nasty response. I also have to actively ignore many tweets, even from people I like and respect, because the format over emphasizes trivial observations or opinions. [0] https://twitter.com/dancerghoul/status/1327361236686811143 https://twitter.com/dancerghoul/status/1327361236686811143 [1] https://twitter.com/ChaikaGaming/status/1270330453053132800 https://twitter.com/ChaikaGaming/status/1270330453053132800