14 ms·

What I would have written

107 points by bradgessler 13y ago

sengstrom 13y ago
I don't do twitter, but I have wondered what it would be to write or read a longer work composed within the limits of 140 character chunks - parceled out over time. It is not so much the size limitation on tweets as it is the disconnect between them that causes the dissolution of bigger ideas.
- md224 13y ago
  It's not exactly 140 character chunks spread out over time, but perhaps this comes close: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein's_Mistress http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein's_Mistress
- zrail 13y ago
  Check out http://twitter-fiction-reader.bugsplat.info http://twitter-fiction-reader.bugsplat.info. I've collected a few twitter-based fiction stories and arranged them in chronological order for easier reading. DadBoner in particular mostly reads like short paragraphs in daily diary entries.
- mreid 13y ago
  Jennifer Egan did a New Yorker story called "Black Box"[1] that was intentionally composed as sub-140 character chunks. It was released on Twitter tweet-by-tweet and collected in a New Yorker science fiction special last year. She is an impressive and experimental writer (check out her "Visit from the Goon Squad") who does a great job with this form. The thought-sized chunks give the story a lot of space and cleverly invites the reader to imagine a lot of context. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_(Jennifer_Egan_story) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_(Jennifer_Egan_story)
- bdarnell 13y ago
  Jennifer Egan's short story Black Box was written in 140-character chunks and published via both the New Yorker's twitter account and the print magazine. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/coming-soon-jennifer-egan-black-box.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/coming-s...
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  Trasnmedia writer Jay Bushman did a story via tweets called "The Good Captain", a sci fi take on a Melville story. He rebroadcast it last year, but the original was in 2007 when Twitter was new and no one knew what it was going to be good for. So he experimented. I followed it at the time and had the tweets sent to my phone as they came in. It was an interesting way to experience a story. Because it was spread out over time, I found myself keeping the context in my head as a low level background process. There's probably a very interesting way or two to use that phenomenon. https://twitter.com/goodcaptain https://twitter.com/goodcaptain
- desas 13y ago
  @samuelpepys is steadily posting the diary of Samuel Pepys - a famous diarist from the 17th century.
md224 13y ago
"And yet I see no solution to this problem." Dustin's problem is similar in some respects to an addiction (which he alludes to), so perhaps the solution is treating it as such; forcing moderation on himself, or even complete detachment (the cold turkey approach). Of course, being involved in technology means Dustin is essentially an alcoholic working at a brewery, so disengagement may be especially difficult. But to throw up your hands and claim there's no way out strikes me as a bit defeatist. If you feel a technology is negatively impacting your thought patterns, perhaps you could find a way to use that technology less.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >*"Dustin's problem is similar in some respects to an addiction (which he alludes to), so perhaps the solution is treating it as such;" The issue I see with this is that it takes the way we use technology for granted. It's just like saying "that stuff is here to stay, learn to deal with it". Which it is true in practice, but doesn't have to be true necessarily. We could have opted as a society to not tolerate those kind of addictive (and mind-crushing) applications of technology, instead of celebrating them. (The same way we have done with smoking, not just the banning in public places, but the whole attitude towards it).
  - md224 13y ago
    While I agree that naive technological utopianism is worrisome and we need to be discussing the social/psychological impact of our inventions, I can't say I would draw an equivalence between Twitter and something like cigarettes... if used in moderation, I think services like Twitter can be very useful to some people. We do need to weigh the costs vs. the benefits, but just as blind acceptance is bad, so is blind rejection... having this discussion is a good start though.
  - pauly007 13y ago
    Placing the emphasis on society, I believe, dilutes the great importance of the decisions of the individual. In life you should take responsibility for your own actions first. The question is more "Is twitter a social problem?" or "Is my twitter use a problem?".
bigiain 13y ago
'and every fucking thing I think about, I also think, “How could I fit that into a tweet that lots of people would favorite or retweet?”' That, as I see it, is the problem – not twitter or 140char limits or any of the other stuff Dustin raises, it's the desire for external validation (and I can't help but imagine him furiously clicking reload on his own blog post to see how fast his Kudos score is climbing…) My takeaway/advice is - try to recognise when you're being manipulated by gamification techniques and choose to be aware of them and ignore/resist them when it's in your better interest. Does anybody _really_ think Picasso would have painted iPad trifles for immediate social media validation, instead of starting and completeing Garçon à la pipe? I _seriously_ doubt that - from Wikipedia: "At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he did not need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works." Picasso _didn't_ paint for the twitterati - he painted for Picasso. Dustin should write for Dustin - not for Twitter. He's allowing himself to become distracted from achieving what he wants at achieve. That's not Twitters fault. Procrastinators gonna procrastinate (he said hypocritically while wasting time on HN…)
- beambot 13y ago
  Picasso also made quick napkin sketchings for passersby. So yeah, I could imagine him painting "triffles for immediate social media validation"... he probably would've enjoyed the exposure. But that didn't prevent him from undertaking more meaningful / involved endeavors too.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    Did he, though? I always took that story as a fictional parable and not an account of something he ever habitually did.
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      These two appear to have a ring of truth but I've not investigated in depth, just a brief google: - http://www.mypicassosighting.com/4.html http://www.mypicassosighting.com/4.html - http://toshidama.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/on-being-a-picture-dealer-the-trouble-with-hiroshige/ http://toshidama.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/on-being-a-picture...
evmar 13y ago
Much like television, smoking, or facebook, it's pretty easy for me to look at these products, look at what the users get out of them, and make the conscious decision not to use them. That isn't to say it's easy to quit smoking, but it's been pretty easy for me to never start smoking because I know what sort of personality I have. (When writing comments like these I always think of this article: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mention... . Sorry if I've done that.)
Goopplesoft 13y ago
Tweets provide a lot of efficiency. "Tweets aren't great because the compress otherwise complex ideas". A decent summary of your essay and tweet-able. Point made in 5 seconds of reading. Yes you don't get the full emersion but thats exactly why both mediums still exist. The tweet saves time and consequently gets a wider audience.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  It often takes multiple restatements of an argument to get it to sink in, because different readers are affected differently by any given set of words. It often takes an essay (or a book, or a series of books, or a body of literature) to fully map out the consequences of what initially seems simple. It can be difficult to truly impress the emotional texture of a concept in 140 characters without relying on cheap appeals -- which obscure the actual concept. Here's the tweetable problem with trying to convey deep concepts on twitter: Easy come, easy go.
Sukotto 13y ago
I just came here after reading this (highly relevant) ZenPencils of Marc Maron's "Social Media Generation". Very impactful one-two punch seeing both of these back to back. http://zenpencils.com/comic/129-marc-maron-the-social-media-generation/ http://zenpencils.com/comic/129-marc-maron-the-social-media-...
InclinedPlane 13y ago
"I sit on the couch watching whatever is on TV. It's not very entertaining but it's something to do, and after a while you get used to it. And yet I see no solution to this problem." What are we, automatons? Farm animals? This isn't rocket science, if you want to stop being a hack then stop being a hack. You have a brain, you have a developed intellect, if you have sufficient introspection to realize you're doing something you don't want to be doing then maybe try not doing that thing. I have a hard time believing that twitter is more addictive than alcohol or heroin or even television. Nothing's forcing you to be a hack other than your own vanity. And there's nothing intrinsically superior to being addicted to seeking bite-sized chunks of personal validation through twitter than there is in seeking feelings of comfort, camaraderie, and friendship through television viewership. Yet if someone wrote about the perils of being a couch potato and the difficulty of stopping we'd just laugh at them and move on.
uptown 13y ago
"And yet I see no solution to this problem." The solution is to not solely crave affirmation from others. Be comfortable with yourself, and try to live a life that enriches yourself, and those around you. If the parts of that that you share happen to enrich those you come in contact with, great ... but the internet-celebrity that Twitter and other social-platforms encourages (how many followers, how many retweets, how many favorites, how many likes, etc.) is fleeting at-best.
smacktoward 13y ago
I tend to agree with this. So much so that I made a more in-depth version of the same argument on my own blog earlier this year: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/ http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/ I think the biggest contributor to the feelings Dustin is talking about is the way Twitter's design puts scorekeeping mechanisms front and center. Follower count is a scorekeeping mechanism -- if I have more followers than you, I'm "better" at Twitter than you are. Retweets are a scorekeeping mechanism -- if I get retweeted a lot, I'm better than you are. And so forth. Scorekeeping mechanisms are problematic because when you make them public, put them right up in the user's face, they turn the application into a video game. People see a connection between some actions and an increase in their "score," and that drives them to repeat the same behaviors. Which is sort of what Dustin's getting at with the comparison to addiction, I think; Twitter is addictive in the same way that, say, Farmville is addictive. It's a Skinner box (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber) rather than a medium designed to facilitate discussion.
kylehardgrave 13y ago
"And yet I see no solution to this problem. I will forever be a slave to 140-characters..." I'm having a hard time sympathizing with this. It's not Twitter that "instantly takes complex ideas out of my brain, over-simplifies them, and ships them off to random people." It's ME. Twitter is just a medium — the solution is to care about those complex thoughts enough to see them through. Not to say that the instant gratification of tweeting does not exist, or is easy to fight — it's a struggle, and something to be mindful of. But the battle is already lost when, as this article does, you shift all the blame to the service instead of looking inward.
tripngroove 13y ago
John Mayer speaking at Berklee College of Music had this to say on the subject: > “The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You’re coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn’t have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.” http://www.berklee-blogs.com/2011/07/john-mayer-2011-clinic-manage-the-temptation-to-publish-yourself/ http://www.berklee-blogs.com/2011/07/john-mayer-2011-clinic-...
breadbox 13y ago
I've stopped cooking for myself because TV dinners are so easy. But most TV dinners aren't great. But because they're so convenient, they have killed my desire to cook. And yet I see no solution to this problem." Keep looking.
wunderlust 13y ago
Woe is me...Twitter has stunted my creativity. Give me a break.
rwallace 13y ago
I see a solution to the problem. Delete your twitter account, now. It's hard to sustain willpower indefinitely but easy to use it in a burst long enough to delete an account.
- bcoates 13y ago
  Twitter has a 30 day waiting period on account deletion to subvert this. What you need to do is set your password to something really obvious and disable two-factor.
  - 6d0debc071 13y ago
    Or randomise your password so you can't get into it.
bowerbird 13y ago
you'll get over the addiction to twitter, and retweets, and likes, and favorites... you'll realize it's a game, a _stupid_ one, and you'll taper off, and then quit totally, or close enough that you'll feel human again. before that, you'll ramp up, and ramp up again, chasing dragons, hoping to get the feeling back, -- "smoking more, but enjoying it less?" is how it was put in a classic advertising campaign -- but it won't work, and you'll get sick and tired of the whole thing, and walk away, with a mix of tremendous relief plus an overwhelming sadness. but walk away you will, and recover you will, and you'll end up older, smarter, and wiser next time. your first revelation -- i am telling you this so you'll recognize it -- is that addiction made you far too preoccupied with yourself, what you "would" have done, or "could" have, or "should" have, and you'll recognize first that you should just _do_, and second (and more importantly) that you need to pay some attention to the other people around you, who you love, and not dwell so much on yourself... -bowerbird
- RobertHoudin 13y ago
  This is spot-on. I feel like I have emerged from a long dream, and now I'm walking around, waiting for everyone else to wake up.
bambax 13y ago
> And yet I see no solution to this problem. How hard can it be not to tweet?? I came here just to say this, and saw that many others had just said the same thing, and yet I felt the urge to say it again, myself! O, irony! Seriously though, Twitter isn't like TV or smoking. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substance there is; TV isn't really addictive, in a medical/chemical sense, but it's so easy -- you sit on the couch and you get distracted by funny/mildly interesting things with sound and images. But Twitter? You have to make a conscious decision to tweet, it's not a default like TV... Reading tweets is boring, writing tweets is work... How can it be difficult to not do it? I guess I just don't get it.
- jdiez17 13y ago
  Since when are TVs "a default"? I don't think I've watched TV in a big while, I don't even remember TVs being generally on around me.
  - bambax 13y ago
    Well, they appear to be. I don't have a TV myself, but in many homes when there's a TV, it seems to be on all the time. Sometimes people mute it to eat lunch or dinner, without even turning it off...
    - jdiez17 13y ago
      Hm, I see. That's not the case where I come from, so I'm wondering if it's a US thing.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- thinkling 13y ago
  I'd argue that if one has an active social circle on Twitter, the social aspect of it might be addictive.
freyfogle 13y ago
Post is too long, can someone please summarize? Ideally in <140 chars. Ta.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  140 chars not enough for complex thoughts - emphasis on applause buttons over reasoned discussion. But, it's addictive - social validation.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
I think dcurtis should not be vilified for "seeking external validation". He is building up Internet capital, turning google juice into a brand. No one claims Warren Buffet is seeking external validation for building up his capital? A while back I realised I was emailing myself ideas (for essays, just random interesting connections) with the hope I would one day go back and turn them into articles and put them up. guess what? so I now have a wordpress app on my phone and I force myself to take an extra minute to turn a two sentence thought into a two paragraph idea. so I have actually published ideas - and I will pull actual longer, researched, articles from there. what I think twitter does not provide, and is I think the next evolution of twitter use, is 140 characters as a pull-quote. You cannot fit a thought into 140 characters but you often can fit a headline. someone notes on here that there are already a lifetime of insightful essays available - bit where are they? how do I find them and especially find them at the right time ? Discovery as a search function is still in its infancy - I probably do want google to know what I am thinking so it can give me the essays that will most help expand those thoughts.
jviddy 13y ago
One perfect idea, distilled to it's essence can be easy shared in less than 140 characters. No all idea's but some. It's just a matter of finding the right idea and taking the time to express it correctly. Having said that, I'm really not a fan of twitter, but that's for completely different and unrelated reasons
krmmalik 13y ago
My experience has not been the same. I've written complete blog posts based on Twitter and Facebook status updates.
jasonkester 13y ago
There must be a group of people somewhere in the world that actually uses Twitter. I've never met any of them in real life, but occasionally I see things like this online that suggests that however far fetched the idea might be, it's nonetheless true. Amazing that this author is so upset about what this random website has done to his life. I have no idea how he could have found enough value in it to have integrated it into his life so deeply. Nor can I understand why he would continue using it if it made him unhappy. In short, seven years later, I still don't get what Twitter is for or why anybody would use it.
- Tichy 13y ago
  If you don't use it, it's probably hard to understand.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - bnegreve 13y ago
    But most successful online services are attractive even without knowing much about them. Tweeter doesn't feel attractive at all. The consequence is that after seven years Tweeter simply ignored by half of the IT population.
- runn1ng 13y ago
  Exactly. I know many people that use Facebook (including myself). It's a website that almost freaking everybody is on; it's used for sharing stuff from daily lives, instant messaging, organizing social events. I have no idea what Twitter is for.
  - buro9 13y ago
    As a counter point, everyone I know is on Twitter and uses it actively, but very few are on Facebook. In fact, we sat around a table earlier this year and were chatting about a piece of news that mentioned some exclusive content via Facebook, and realised that none of us had access. And that was fine by us, we don't really get what Facebook is for, and we just went back to talking and continued some of the conversations next day on Twitter.
waxjar 13y ago
Is he seriously comparing himself with Picasso? I knew Mr Curtis thinks quite highly of himself, but this surprises me. Just get off Twitter if you really feel this way, Mr. Curtis. It's not that hard.
drharris 13y ago
Are we really still talking about 140 characters these days? Why can't we just let it go, let it be?
Pxtl 13y ago
tl;dr

107 points by bradgessler 13y ago

I don't do twitter, but I have wondered what it would be to write or read a longer work composed within the limits of 140 character chunks - parceled out over time. It is not so much the size limitation on tweets as it is the disconnect between them that causes the dissolution of bigger ideas.

md224 13y ago
It's not exactly 140 character chunks spread out over time, but perhaps this comes close: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein's_Mistress http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein's_Mistress
zrail 13y ago
Check out http://twitter-fiction-reader.bugsplat.info http://twitter-fiction-reader.bugsplat.info. I've collected a few twitter-based fiction stories and arranged them in chronological order for easier reading. DadBoner in particular mostly reads like short paragraphs in daily diary entries.
mreid 13y ago
Jennifer Egan did a New Yorker story called "Black Box"[1] that was intentionally composed as sub-140 character chunks. It was released on Twitter tweet-by-tweet and collected in a New Yorker science fiction special last year. She is an impressive and experimental writer (check out her "Visit from the Goon Squad") who does a great job with this form. The thought-sized chunks give the story a lot of space and cleverly invites the reader to imagine a lot of context. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_(Jennifer_Egan_story) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_(Jennifer_Egan_story)
bdarnell 13y ago
Jennifer Egan's short story Black Box was written in 140-character chunks and published via both the New Yorker's twitter account and the print magazine. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/coming-soon-jennifer-egan-black-box.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/coming-s...
waterlesscloud 13y ago
Trasnmedia writer Jay Bushman did a story via tweets called "The Good Captain", a sci fi take on a Melville story. He rebroadcast it last year, but the original was in 2007 when Twitter was new and no one knew what it was going to be good for. So he experimented. I followed it at the time and had the tweets sent to my phone as they came in. It was an interesting way to experience a story. Because it was spread out over time, I found myself keeping the context in my head as a low level background process. There's probably a very interesting way or two to use that phenomenon. https://twitter.com/goodcaptain https://twitter.com/goodcaptain
desas 13y ago
@samuelpepys is steadily posting the diary of Samuel Pepys - a famous diarist from the 17th century.

md224 13y ago

"And yet I see no solution to this problem." Dustin's problem is similar in some respects to an addiction (which he alludes to), so perhaps the solution is treating it as such; forcing moderation on himself, or even complete detachment (the cold turkey approach). Of course, being involved in technology means Dustin is essentially an alcoholic working at a brewery, so disengagement may be especially difficult. But to throw up your hands and claim there's no way out strikes me as a bit defeatist. If you feel a technology is negatively impacting your thought patterns, perhaps you could find a way to use that technology less.

coldtea 13y ago
>*"Dustin's problem is similar in some respects to an addiction (which he alludes to), so perhaps the solution is treating it as such;" The issue I see with this is that it takes the way we use technology for granted. It's just like saying "that stuff is here to stay, learn to deal with it". Which it is true in practice, but doesn't have to be true necessarily. We could have opted as a society to not tolerate those kind of addictive (and mind-crushing) applications of technology, instead of celebrating them. (The same way we have done with smoking, not just the banning in public places, but the whole attitude towards it).
- md224 13y ago
  While I agree that naive technological utopianism is worrisome and we need to be discussing the social/psychological impact of our inventions, I can't say I would draw an equivalence between Twitter and something like cigarettes... if used in moderation, I think services like Twitter can be very useful to some people. We do need to weigh the costs vs. the benefits, but just as blind acceptance is bad, so is blind rejection... having this discussion is a good start though.
- pauly007 13y ago
  Placing the emphasis on society, I believe, dilutes the great importance of the decisions of the individual. In life you should take responsibility for your own actions first. The question is more "Is twitter a social problem?" or "Is my twitter use a problem?".

bigiain 13y ago

'and every fucking thing I think about, I also think, “How could I fit that into a tweet that lots of people would favorite or retweet?”' That, as I see it, is the problem – not twitter or 140char limits or any of the other stuff Dustin raises, it's the desire for external validation (and I can't help but imagine him furiously clicking reload on his own blog post to see how fast his Kudos score is climbing…) My takeaway/advice is - try to recognise when you're being manipulated by gamification techniques and choose to be aware of them and ignore/resist them when it's in your better interest. Does anybody _really_ think Picasso would have painted iPad trifles for immediate social media validation, instead of starting and completeing Garçon à la pipe? I _seriously_ doubt that - from Wikipedia: "At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he did not need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works." Picasso _didn't_ paint for the twitterati - he painted for Picasso. Dustin should write for Dustin - not for Twitter. He's allowing himself to become distracted from achieving what he wants at achieve. That's not Twitters fault. Procrastinators gonna procrastinate (he said hypocritically while wasting time on HN…)

beambot 13y ago
Picasso also made quick napkin sketchings for passersby. So yeah, I could imagine him painting "triffles for immediate social media validation"... he probably would've enjoyed the exposure. But that didn't prevent him from undertaking more meaningful / involved endeavors too.
- philwelch 13y ago
  Did he, though? I always took that story as a fictional parable and not an account of something he ever habitually did.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    These two appear to have a ring of truth but I've not investigated in depth, just a brief google: - http://www.mypicassosighting.com/4.html http://www.mypicassosighting.com/4.html - http://toshidama.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/on-being-a-picture-dealer-the-trouble-with-hiroshige/ http://toshidama.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/on-being-a-picture...

evmar 13y ago

Much like television, smoking, or facebook, it's pretty easy for me to look at these products, look at what the users get out of them, and make the conscious decision not to use them. That isn't to say it's easy to quit smoking, but it's been pretty easy for me to never start smoking because I know what sort of personality I have. (When writing comments like these I always think of this article: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mention... . Sorry if I've done that.)

Goopplesoft 13y ago

Tweets provide a lot of efficiency. "Tweets aren't great because the compress otherwise complex ideas". A decent summary of your essay and tweet-able. Point made in 5 seconds of reading. Yes you don't get the full emersion but thats exactly why both mediums still exist. The tweet saves time and consequently gets a wider audience.

jacques_chester 13y ago
It often takes multiple restatements of an argument to get it to sink in, because different readers are affected differently by any given set of words. It often takes an essay (or a book, or a series of books, or a body of literature) to fully map out the consequences of what initially seems simple. It can be difficult to truly impress the emotional texture of a concept in 140 characters without relying on cheap appeals -- which obscure the actual concept. Here's the tweetable problem with trying to convey deep concepts on twitter: Easy come, easy go.

Sukotto 13y ago

I just came here after reading this (highly relevant) ZenPencils of Marc Maron's "Social Media Generation". Very impactful one-two punch seeing both of these back to back. http://zenpencils.com/comic/129-marc-maron-the-social-media-generation/ http://zenpencils.com/comic/129-marc-maron-the-social-media-...

InclinedPlane 13y ago

"I sit on the couch watching whatever is on TV. It's not very entertaining but it's something to do, and after a while you get used to it. And yet I see no solution to this problem." What are we, automatons? Farm animals? This isn't rocket science, if you want to stop being a hack then stop being a hack. You have a brain, you have a developed intellect, if you have sufficient introspection to realize you're doing something you don't want to be doing then maybe try not doing that thing. I have a hard time believing that twitter is more addictive than alcohol or heroin or even television. Nothing's forcing you to be a hack other than your own vanity. And there's nothing intrinsically superior to being addicted to seeking bite-sized chunks of personal validation through twitter than there is in seeking feelings of comfort, camaraderie, and friendship through television viewership. Yet if someone wrote about the perils of being a couch potato and the difficulty of stopping we'd just laugh at them and move on.

uptown 13y ago

"And yet I see no solution to this problem." The solution is to not solely crave affirmation from others. Be comfortable with yourself, and try to live a life that enriches yourself, and those around you. If the parts of that that you share happen to enrich those you come in contact with, great ... but the internet-celebrity that Twitter and other social-platforms encourages (how many followers, how many retweets, how many favorites, how many likes, etc.) is fleeting at-best.

smacktoward 13y ago

I tend to agree with this. So much so that I made a more in-depth version of the same argument on my own blog earlier this year: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/ http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/ I think the biggest contributor to the feelings Dustin is talking about is the way Twitter's design puts scorekeeping mechanisms front and center. Follower count is a scorekeeping mechanism -- if I have more followers than you, I'm "better" at Twitter than you are. Retweets are a scorekeeping mechanism -- if I get retweeted a lot, I'm better than you are. And so forth. Scorekeeping mechanisms are problematic because when you make them public, put them right up in the user's face, they turn the application into a video game. People see a connection between some actions and an increase in their "score," and that drives them to repeat the same behaviors. Which is sort of what Dustin's getting at with the comparison to addiction, I think; Twitter is addictive in the same way that, say, Farmville is addictive. It's a Skinner box (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber) rather than a medium designed to facilitate discussion.

kylehardgrave 13y ago

"And yet I see no solution to this problem. I will forever be a slave to 140-characters..." I'm having a hard time sympathizing with this. It's not Twitter that "instantly takes complex ideas out of my brain, over-simplifies them, and ships them off to random people." It's ME. Twitter is just a medium — the solution is to care about those complex thoughts enough to see them through. Not to say that the instant gratification of tweeting does not exist, or is easy to fight — it's a struggle, and something to be mindful of. But the battle is already lost when, as this article does, you shift all the blame to the service instead of looking inward.

tripngroove 13y ago

John Mayer speaking at Berklee College of Music had this to say on the subject: > “The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You’re coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn’t have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.” http://www.berklee-blogs.com/2011/07/john-mayer-2011-clinic-manage-the-temptation-to-publish-yourself/ http://www.berklee-blogs.com/2011/07/john-mayer-2011-clinic-...

breadbox 13y ago

I've stopped cooking for myself because TV dinners are so easy. But most TV dinners aren't great. But because they're so convenient, they have killed my desire to cook. And yet I see no solution to this problem." Keep looking.

wunderlust 13y ago

Woe is me...Twitter has stunted my creativity. Give me a break.

rwallace 13y ago

I see a solution to the problem. Delete your twitter account, now. It's hard to sustain willpower indefinitely but easy to use it in a burst long enough to delete an account.

bcoates 13y ago
Twitter has a 30 day waiting period on account deletion to subvert this. What you need to do is set your password to something really obvious and disable two-factor.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  Or randomise your password so you can't get into it.

bowerbird 13y ago

you'll get over the addiction to twitter, and retweets, and likes, and favorites... you'll realize it's a game, a _stupid_ one, and you'll taper off, and then quit totally, or close enough that you'll feel human again. before that, you'll ramp up, and ramp up again, chasing dragons, hoping to get the feeling back, -- "smoking more, but enjoying it less?" is how it was put in a classic advertising campaign -- but it won't work, and you'll get sick and tired of the whole thing, and walk away, with a mix of tremendous relief plus an overwhelming sadness. but walk away you will, and recover you will, and you'll end up older, smarter, and wiser next time. your first revelation -- i am telling you this so you'll recognize it -- is that addiction made you far too preoccupied with yourself, what you "would" have done, or "could" have, or "should" have, and you'll recognize first that you should just _do_, and second (and more importantly) that you need to pay some attention to the other people around you, who you love, and not dwell so much on yourself... -bowerbird

RobertHoudin 13y ago
This is spot-on. I feel like I have emerged from a long dream, and now I'm walking around, waiting for everyone else to wake up.

bambax 13y ago

> And yet I see no solution to this problem. How hard can it be not to tweet?? I came here just to say this, and saw that many others had just said the same thing, and yet I felt the urge to say it again, myself! O, irony! Seriously though, Twitter isn't like TV or smoking. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substance there is; TV isn't really addictive, in a medical/chemical sense, but it's so easy -- you sit on the couch and you get distracted by funny/mildly interesting things with sound and images. But Twitter? You have to make a conscious decision to tweet, it's not a default like TV... Reading tweets is boring, writing tweets is work... How can it be difficult to not do it? I guess I just don't get it.

jdiez17 13y ago
Since when are TVs "a default"? I don't think I've watched TV in a big while, I don't even remember TVs being generally on around me.
- bambax 13y ago
  Well, they appear to be. I don't have a TV myself, but in many homes when there's a TV, it seems to be on all the time. Sometimes people mute it to eat lunch or dinner, without even turning it off...
  - jdiez17 13y ago
    Hm, I see. That's not the case where I come from, so I'm wondering if it's a US thing.
- deleted 13y ago
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thinkling 13y ago
I'd argue that if one has an active social circle on Twitter, the social aspect of it might be addictive.

freyfogle 13y ago

Post is too long, can someone please summarize? Ideally in <140 chars. Ta.

6d0debc071 13y ago
140 chars not enough for complex thoughts - emphasis on applause buttons over reasoned discussion. But, it's addictive - social validation.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

I think dcurtis should not be vilified for "seeking external validation". He is building up Internet capital, turning google juice into a brand. No one claims Warren Buffet is seeking external validation for building up his capital? A while back I realised I was emailing myself ideas (for essays, just random interesting connections) with the hope I would one day go back and turn them into articles and put them up. guess what? so I now have a wordpress app on my phone and I force myself to take an extra minute to turn a two sentence thought into a two paragraph idea. so I have actually published ideas - and I will pull actual longer, researched, articles from there. what I think twitter does not provide, and is I think the next evolution of twitter use, is 140 characters as a pull-quote. You cannot fit a thought into 140 characters but you often can fit a headline. someone notes on here that there are already a lifetime of insightful essays available - bit where are they? how do I find them and especially find them at the right time ? Discovery as a search function is still in its infancy - I probably do want google to know what I am thinking so it can give me the essays that will most help expand those thoughts.

jviddy 13y ago

One perfect idea, distilled to it's essence can be easy shared in less than 140 characters. No all idea's but some. It's just a matter of finding the right idea and taking the time to express it correctly. Having said that, I'm really not a fan of twitter, but that's for completely different and unrelated reasons

krmmalik 13y ago

My experience has not been the same. I've written complete blog posts based on Twitter and Facebook status updates.

jasonkester 13y ago

There must be a group of people somewhere in the world that actually uses Twitter. I've never met any of them in real life, but occasionally I see things like this online that suggests that however far fetched the idea might be, it's nonetheless true. Amazing that this author is so upset about what this random website has done to his life. I have no idea how he could have found enough value in it to have integrated it into his life so deeply. Nor can I understand why he would continue using it if it made him unhappy. In short, seven years later, I still don't get what Twitter is for or why anybody would use it.

Tichy 13y ago
If you don't use it, it's probably hard to understand.
- deleted 13y ago
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- bnegreve 13y ago
  But most successful online services are attractive even without knowing much about them. Tweeter doesn't feel attractive at all. The consequence is that after seven years Tweeter simply ignored by half of the IT population.
runn1ng 13y ago
Exactly. I know many people that use Facebook (including myself). It's a website that almost freaking everybody is on; it's used for sharing stuff from daily lives, instant messaging, organizing social events. I have no idea what Twitter is for.
- buro9 13y ago
  As a counter point, everyone I know is on Twitter and uses it actively, but very few are on Facebook. In fact, we sat around a table earlier this year and were chatting about a piece of news that mentioned some exclusive content via Facebook, and realised that none of us had access. And that was fine by us, we don't really get what Facebook is for, and we just went back to talking and continued some of the conversations next day on Twitter.

waxjar 13y ago

Is he seriously comparing himself with Picasso? I knew Mr Curtis thinks quite highly of himself, but this surprises me. Just get off Twitter if you really feel this way, Mr. Curtis. It's not that hard.

drharris 13y ago

Are we really still talking about 140 characters these days? Why can't we just let it go, let it be?

Pxtl 13y ago

tl;dr