I’m with you 100%. The Twitter product has always been a clunky pile of bullshit for me. But somehow it became the default public space and choice of celebrities, etc and I think that has been 98% of its appeal.
Yea. Used it for four things. To keep up to date with creators I like, to keep up to date with friends, to keep up to date with a bunch of webcomics and to randomly rant into the void when I felt like it.
Yeah. I think that’s the appeal. You could just shout things and hope others would follow until a part of the auditorium would turn their heads to you. So, if someone shouted “it’s an Earthquake!”, and people nearby felt it and tweeted, implying it was true, everyone in the auditorium would know about it. Of course, other types of messages were send in Twitter, but most importantly, actors and robots started to use Twitter to plainly shout lies and noise.
I’ve looked at the early Usenet archives, and typical posts there resembled this format quite a lot. It’s later that Usenet became a place where you write long considerate posts, and also expect rather quick answers.
It’s actually interesting to communicate in a rare terse format.
The reason I don’t use Twitter, BlueSky, anything like that is - I don’t have a scenario of it being useful for me.
Usenet to me seems more like Lemmy than anything else. All conversations are groups by topic, just like Lemmy. Although they are all just “text posts”.
I follow some economist guys, they are always sharing some graphs and chart data that help people to invest efficiently on the local stock market. Some talk to them and I follow the conversations as they are really interesting. But I don’t talk to them.
Asking as a layman, isn’t it well established that the stock market is extremely efficient and that active trading underperforms (for the same risk level) passively buying the market? Or does this not apply to very local markets?
About 15 years ago, I moved to a city where I didn’t know anyone. I joined Twitter because I like to try new apps as early as possible. It turned out to be a great place to talk about live music in my city, amongst other things. I met all my friends on Twitter.
At that time in my city, it was very much the town square that Elon wants it to be now. It was a place to discuss events in realtime; especially sporting events.
I suspect the advantage for Twitter was that you could communicate with people you didn’t know directly like celebrities, authors, politicians, etc. Not just write to them, but they write back because sending off a short message is much easier than making a call or writing a letter. Sometimes that is an unhealthy parasocial relationship but, it doesn’t have to be.
Kevin Smith basically started writing the movie Tusk in a collaborative way with Twitter.
Perhaps you are aware there is an ongoing event, say for example a football game, or an election, or an outage of your email service provider. You go to one of these “scream into the void” social sites, search on the topic, and learn what people are saying about it. Maybe someone knows what’s really going on, maybe some of those people have some interesting insights and you engage with them, not unlike you and I are engaging right now. Others can observe, perhaps contribute, and after the event has concluded, everyone goes their own way. Hopefully in the end the interactions are beneficial for all.
I thought it was a great idea for official statements. Kind of like a new type of RSS feed.
Local transport companies can advertise delays, meteorology organisations can advertise natural disasters, police can post active missing person alerts, etc.
But it seems like it is just vapid narcissists thinking other people give a shit about their random thoughts.
I agree. I followed a couple of theaters, music venues, and bars to see what events were coming up and when happy hour was. I never understood the idea of following people just to hear what they were thinking every 15 seconds.
In an auditorium with everyone shouting you don’t get to hear anything. In Twitter you get to see what you want instead of what most people want like on reddit and Lemmy. I much prefer that to other people deciding for me. At least that way I can see something other than shitposts and US politics.
I love it for sports stuff. This player is out today. Player was injured in the game and out for the remainder of the game. Records, stats, things like that are great for these mediums.
Me too. Tried twitter way back in the early days of it. Never found it useful. Others did though obviously, which I don’t understand, but they did. What I find interesting is the seeming need to replace it with something similar. Why? Is it like gradually kicking an addiction by switching to something slightly less bad, but not going full cold turkey?
I just… I could never comprehend twitter (or Mastadon, or bluesky for that matter).
The whole structure of the conversation feel like people shouting into an open auditorium. And everyone is shouting at once.
I just do not see the appeal.
I’m with you 100%. The Twitter product has always been a clunky pile of bullshit for me. But somehow it became the default public space and choice of celebrities, etc and I think that has been 98% of its appeal.
Yea. Used it for four things. To keep up to date with creators I like, to keep up to date with friends, to keep up to date with a bunch of webcomics and to randomly rant into the void when I felt like it.
Yeah. I think that’s the appeal. You could just shout things and hope others would follow until a part of the auditorium would turn their heads to you. So, if someone shouted “it’s an Earthquake!”, and people nearby felt it and tweeted, implying it was true, everyone in the auditorium would know about it. Of course, other types of messages were send in Twitter, but most importantly, actors and robots started to use Twitter to plainly shout lies and noise.
Small notes to be answered rarely.
I’ve looked at the early Usenet archives, and typical posts there resembled this format quite a lot. It’s later that Usenet became a place where you write long considerate posts, and also expect rather quick answers.
It’s actually interesting to communicate in a rare terse format.
The reason I don’t use Twitter, BlueSky, anything like that is - I don’t have a scenario of it being useful for me.
Usenet to me seems more like Lemmy than anything else. All conversations are groups by topic, just like Lemmy. Although they are all just “text posts”.
I follow some economist guys, they are always sharing some graphs and chart data that help people to invest efficiently on the local stock market. Some talk to them and I follow the conversations as they are really interesting. But I don’t talk to them.
Asking as a layman, isn’t it well established that the stock market is extremely efficient and that active trading underperforms (for the same risk level) passively buying the market? Or does this not apply to very local markets?
Indeed. At least it does here in south America. Actually active trading is discouraged because you are always running after the price change.
As you say, performance wise, you either go random or buying ETFs for good overall performers indexes, like s&p or the DOW
There are upsides to Twitter, but having to follow somebody and to register is a no.
You can just search them.
About 15 years ago, I moved to a city where I didn’t know anyone. I joined Twitter because I like to try new apps as early as possible. It turned out to be a great place to talk about live music in my city, amongst other things. I met all my friends on Twitter.
At that time in my city, it was very much the town square that Elon wants it to be now. It was a place to discuss events in realtime; especially sporting events.
I suspect the advantage for Twitter was that you could communicate with people you didn’t know directly like celebrities, authors, politicians, etc. Not just write to them, but they write back because sending off a short message is much easier than making a call or writing a letter. Sometimes that is an unhealthy parasocial relationship but, it doesn’t have to be.
Kevin Smith basically started writing the movie Tusk in a collaborative way with Twitter.
Me too but here’s one useful function:
Perhaps you are aware there is an ongoing event, say for example a football game, or an election, or an outage of your email service provider. You go to one of these “scream into the void” social sites, search on the topic, and learn what people are saying about it. Maybe someone knows what’s really going on, maybe some of those people have some interesting insights and you engage with them, not unlike you and I are engaging right now. Others can observe, perhaps contribute, and after the event has concluded, everyone goes their own way. Hopefully in the end the interactions are beneficial for all.
Thats a job for ‘journalists’ these days.
How are these interactions beneficial for all? What a load of crap.
I thought it was a great idea for official statements. Kind of like a new type of RSS feed.
Local transport companies can advertise delays, meteorology organisations can advertise natural disasters, police can post active missing person alerts, etc.
But it seems like it is just vapid narcissists thinking other people give a shit about their random thoughts.
Why does an RSS feed need a “new type” tho? Normal RSS can be hosted by anyone and can be read on so many different readers…
Why wasn’t RSS as popular as the original Twitter?
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I suspect it’s the same answer.
RSS is in no way simple to regular normies.
I agree. I followed a couple of theaters, music venues, and bars to see what events were coming up and when happy hour was. I never understood the idea of following people just to hear what they were thinking every 15 seconds.
In an auditorium with everyone shouting you don’t get to hear anything. In Twitter you get to see what you want instead of what most people want like on reddit and Lemmy. I much prefer that to other people deciding for me. At least that way I can see something other than shitposts and US politics.
I love it for sports stuff. This player is out today. Player was injured in the game and out for the remainder of the game. Records, stats, things like that are great for these mediums.
Me too. Tried twitter way back in the early days of it. Never found it useful. Others did though obviously, which I don’t understand, but they did. What I find interesting is the seeming need to replace it with something similar. Why? Is it like gradually kicking an addiction by switching to something slightly less bad, but not going full cold turkey?
Oh yeah. Why? Yeah… yeah I could never imagine leaving one toxic social media and then trying to find a similar replacement…
Agree, it’s like I had a feed for reading only instagram/facebook comments. No, thanks
Seems to me like you comprehend it perfectly!
I also never really saw the appeal. And I closed the account I’d barely used since 2007 (When it was primarily for announcing you were pooping and Lifehacker told me you could make lists with remember the milk) when the first buddy bought it.
I occasionally tried to use it for getting near real time news about things, but I guess I sucked at following the right people.
Now, with privacy badger, I never have to interact even when sites embed xits (if we’re going with xitter, then it’s full of xits, right?).
Depends how you use it. I follow artsy people and game devs and my feed is mostly just art and game dev related posts.