On the many faces of Twitter.

[drleo]

John Oliver likened Twitter to a cocktail party in his segment about corporations on Twitter. (You can watch it here. I'll wait until you come back. Are you back? Great.) That's a pretty good characterization. It's a large social event where you have brief, usually superficial conversations with people you know at multiple levels of familiarity, and are best with a drink in your hand whose contents are already half in your brain. It's a lot like conventions, too.

I've been pondering my complex relationship with Twitter and want to share a few thoughts, without any real thesis in mind.

I've found Twitter useful for two purposes:

1. Receiving announcements from people or entities that interest me, in much the way we used to subscribe to newsletters or e-newsletters, and
   
2. As a sort of wide-scale instant messenger with lots of people I know.
   

But it has many other purposes. It's something to do while you're waiting (on the toilet/in between sets/for the bus/on the bus/while skydiving), a worldwide-accessible diary, a party line, a discussion forum, a popularity contest, and a place for people and companies with things to sell to shill, amongst other purposes. Now, I didn't say it was good at all of these things. It really isn't good as a discussion forum. It's a forum that by design forces people to discuss issues in sound bites. Unsurprisingly, this doesn't make for fruitful discussions. I'm a fan of the long-form for discussion of anything controversial, but it's not the way the rest of the world sees it. Twitter by contrast is an echo chamber which gives you the tools to exclude any harmonies that are discordant with your desired tone.

I do tend to read everything that comes up on my timeline, which is why I keep my followers list so short, and tend to trim accounts who post very frequently and end up saying little of interest to me. I just can't keep up, otherwise. I can only guess the aim of those who are following thousands of accounts is to participate in the popularity contest. Do they have a private list of the people they actually care enough to read regularly?

I also try to write things I think others will find interesting, but I'm certainly guilty of just being bored or annoyed and need something to fill the time or to let off some steam, respectively.

So, that's my complex relationship with Twitter. Told you there wasn't really a point.