Twitter, What Is It Good For?
Before I got a Twitter account, I couldn't see ANY use for it at all. I have a website, I have a LiveJournal, I have messenger services, I have several social networking profiles, including MySpace, OKCupid, Fetlife, DancePartner, and a few dozen Yahoo! and Google group subscriptions. I couldn't see what Twitter did that anything else on the web couldn't also do, plus it had that damn 140 character limitation.
Now that I have a Twitter account, I *still* think it could end tomorrow and my life wouldn't be significantly negatively affected by it. I might even discover more free time for other internet time-sucks, like updating my frickin' website.
There are some benefits from Twitter that I have discovered, but, for the most part, the biggest benefits I get from Twitter are benefits I also get from LJ. I can follow a bunch of people who say things I care to read, and I can post things that I want to share without feeling like I am imposing on people the way I do with email. People have to intentionally follow me, which means that they make conscious decisions to read what I write, and they have to make a double effort to click on links that I share, so I don't feel like I'm annoying people the way I get annoyed when I'm sent glurge or email forwards. If you don't want to read what I post, you don't have to follow me. If you want to read what I write but don't like my rapid-fire tweet style, you can follow me online but not on your phone. You have options & it's all your choice.
The things I get out of Twitter are introductions to links, mostly, and a general sort of check-in with those I care about. I get that from LJ too, or at least I got it more often before everyone discovered Twitter. But LJ and Twitter are where I read interesting news articles, am told about exciting products or see funny/cool YouTube videos. It's where my friends can keep me updated on how they're doing when we don't always have time to give a phone call or email to every single person we know.
But the drawback to Twitter is still that damn 140 character limitation. People, myself included, continue to try to use Twitter as an actual discourse medium, when it's really only good to share links or witticisms with people who already agree with you. It is not a good place to engage in a discussion with an exchange of ideas. By necessity, all messages are either so brief as to be difficult to defend, or take up multiple entries that followers find difficult/annoying to follow. We have to paraphrase and simplify and take short cuts in order to make our points. Soundbites are great for conversation starters or to make a larger concept memorable, but they do not usually stand alone for complex concepts - particularly the ones I tend to use, like polyamory or science or atheism.
Twitter is also rife with misunderstanding - even moreso that the internet in general, precisely because of its brevity. I have gotten into numerous debates with people who were not necessarily on opposing sides, it's just that one misunderstood what the other was saying & it took lots of tweets to reach the point where the problem was realized. And, in some cases, even pointing out where the miscommunication happened did not stop the argument, as the nature of soundbite tweets tended to make people *sound* rude or feel attacked even when they weren't being rude or attacked. So reconciliation was difficult, if possible at all.
Because of the inherent difficulty with engaging in an in-depth discussion, in which ideas are exchanged and explanations can be given, I find I am increasingly less likely to allow people with significantly different viewpoints to follow me on Twitter. Here, in LJ, someone can disagree with me, and I have the space to explain myself better or they have enough space to explain what the disagreement is about. I also have a modicum of control and can keep blatantly abusive comments from existing in my own space. In Twitter, I can't stop anyone from tweeting what they want about me, and adding @Joreth to the tweet means it will show up in my Replies section to annoy and pester me even if I don't follow that person myself. I also can't avoid seeing tweets from people who use certain hastags that I might be interested in following. If I look up #polyamory to see what the poly community is talking about, I'll also get the fucktard who tweets "#polyamory is just an excuse to cheat", which makes me angry.
It becomes exhausting, reading all the @Joreth replies from people who are abusive or just plain wrong. Most anti-vaxxers don't come into my journal to accuse me of being a shill for Big Pharma. On Twitter, if I want to see what other pro-vaxxers are saying & I look up the hashtag "#vaccine", I'll get anyone who wants to use that tag, including the anti-vaxxers. If I respond (yes, I know I can avoid that - sometimes it's difficult, and sometimes the conversation starts harmless enough and then devolves), then I dread looking at my @Joreth reply inbox because someone I'm sick of talking to might be in there among all the welcomed tweets from my friends.
So I find myself blocking people with significantly different viewpoints to my own. I hate the thought of potentially insulating myself from contrary opinions, but I get that shit at work, and through newspaper articles and other blogs that I read, and from my family who sends me emails. And the occasional well-reasoned or legitimately curious but dissenting opinion here. Contrary to my public persona, I don't actually like getting into flame wars. I just really hate to let inaccuracies slide by uncontested and I'm not afraid to speak up, so that tends to lead me into flame wars (that and my gutter speech - I like accuracy but I also like casual speech, cussing, and sarcasm, none of which help me avoid flame wars). But I don't actually like confrontation at all. So these short tweets, with their inability to thoroughly discuss the topic at hand, their necessarily incomplete and inaccurate statements due to brevity, their high degree of short and hot tempers because of the brevity, their frequent misunderstandings, these short tweets tend to make me impatient with people who regularly disagree with me and I am much more likely to block them.
I have a follower in particular who never tweets a word to me that isn't a contradiction of something I tweeted earlier. And it's not just a difference of opinion, he's often demonstrably wrong or his tweets are incomplete or naive, only sometimes due to the length restriction. I once asked him why he even bothers to follow me since he never tweets an agreement of any sort, he only tweets disagreements. He said because agreements are boring and only disagreements were interesting conversation.
I've had quite interesting conversations that were not disagreements. Sometimes they're agreements, and sometimes it's merely one person imparting information to another, and sometimes it's just social interaction like flirting or joking. datan0de and I frequently engage in "disagreement" that is actually a form of flirting for us. The people I care about most and whose opinions I value most do not agree with me about everything. Getting people to validate my opinions is not my goal for conversation. But nothing but disagreement is also boring. It's tedious, it's stressful, and disagreement for the sake of disagreement is unproductive and uninteresting. I once dated a guy who enjoyed the intellectual challenge of disagreement (not debate) so much that he would often take a side he did not hold and pursue it to its ridiculous extreme just to keep the argument going. He is a former partner for a multitude of reasons, this being chief among them. When tacit and I disagree on something, even both of us having a penchant for sarcasm and dismissive statements doesn't prevent us from having a thorough discussion with an exchange of ideas. I am just as likely to come around to his way of thinking as I am to maintain my position when I disagree with him, depending upon the topic & the support for our respective sides. So it's not just that I want to be right and that I insist on converting everyone who disagrees with me. I mean, I do want to be right, but being able to "win" an argument or surround myself with yes-men are not the criteria for who gets to be a part of my life or social circle.
Twitter is not a good medium for an exchange of ideas. It's a medium for an exchange of funny YouTube links and in-group soundbites and discovering new blogs on the recommendation of friends and flirting, and even the occasional "this is what I'm doing right this moment that only people who care about me in general would give a shit about". I feel as though I'm able to remain connected better with long-distance friends and metamours whom I have not maintained as close ties with prior to Twitter. I think this is a Good Thing, although something that could be accomplished via other means (i.e. LiveJournal, and I suppose Facebook, if I didn't already have LJ and Twitter). But people who just want to argue with me, or who have significantly opposing viewpoints who hope to change my mind via 140 characters (particularly those who I have debunked or ridiculed already in LJ) can just go fuck off. I make much more liberal use of the "block" button in Twitter than here, or anywhere else (other than my personal email or IM clients).
Now that I have a Twitter account, I *still* think it could end tomorrow and my life wouldn't be significantly negatively affected by it. I might even discover more free time for other internet time-sucks, like updating my frickin' website.
There are some benefits from Twitter that I have discovered, but, for the most part, the biggest benefits I get from Twitter are benefits I also get from LJ. I can follow a bunch of people who say things I care to read, and I can post things that I want to share without feeling like I am imposing on people the way I do with email. People have to intentionally follow me, which means that they make conscious decisions to read what I write, and they have to make a double effort to click on links that I share, so I don't feel like I'm annoying people the way I get annoyed when I'm sent glurge or email forwards. If you don't want to read what I post, you don't have to follow me. If you want to read what I write but don't like my rapid-fire tweet style, you can follow me online but not on your phone. You have options & it's all your choice.
The things I get out of Twitter are introductions to links, mostly, and a general sort of check-in with those I care about. I get that from LJ too, or at least I got it more often before everyone discovered Twitter. But LJ and Twitter are where I read interesting news articles, am told about exciting products or see funny/cool YouTube videos. It's where my friends can keep me updated on how they're doing when we don't always have time to give a phone call or email to every single person we know.
But the drawback to Twitter is still that damn 140 character limitation. People, myself included, continue to try to use Twitter as an actual discourse medium, when it's really only good to share links or witticisms with people who already agree with you. It is not a good place to engage in a discussion with an exchange of ideas. By necessity, all messages are either so brief as to be difficult to defend, or take up multiple entries that followers find difficult/annoying to follow. We have to paraphrase and simplify and take short cuts in order to make our points. Soundbites are great for conversation starters or to make a larger concept memorable, but they do not usually stand alone for complex concepts - particularly the ones I tend to use, like polyamory or science or atheism.
Twitter is also rife with misunderstanding - even moreso that the internet in general, precisely because of its brevity. I have gotten into numerous debates with people who were not necessarily on opposing sides, it's just that one misunderstood what the other was saying & it took lots of tweets to reach the point where the problem was realized. And, in some cases, even pointing out where the miscommunication happened did not stop the argument, as the nature of soundbite tweets tended to make people *sound* rude or feel attacked even when they weren't being rude or attacked. So reconciliation was difficult, if possible at all.
Because of the inherent difficulty with engaging in an in-depth discussion, in which ideas are exchanged and explanations can be given, I find I am increasingly less likely to allow people with significantly different viewpoints to follow me on Twitter. Here, in LJ, someone can disagree with me, and I have the space to explain myself better or they have enough space to explain what the disagreement is about. I also have a modicum of control and can keep blatantly abusive comments from existing in my own space. In Twitter, I can't stop anyone from tweeting what they want about me, and adding @Joreth to the tweet means it will show up in my Replies section to annoy and pester me even if I don't follow that person myself. I also can't avoid seeing tweets from people who use certain hastags that I might be interested in following. If I look up #polyamory to see what the poly community is talking about, I'll also get the fucktard who tweets "#polyamory is just an excuse to cheat", which makes me angry.
It becomes exhausting, reading all the @Joreth replies from people who are abusive or just plain wrong. Most anti-vaxxers don't come into my journal to accuse me of being a shill for Big Pharma. On Twitter, if I want to see what other pro-vaxxers are saying & I look up the hashtag "#vaccine", I'll get anyone who wants to use that tag, including the anti-vaxxers. If I respond (yes, I know I can avoid that - sometimes it's difficult, and sometimes the conversation starts harmless enough and then devolves), then I dread looking at my @Joreth reply inbox because someone I'm sick of talking to might be in there among all the welcomed tweets from my friends.
So I find myself blocking people with significantly different viewpoints to my own. I hate the thought of potentially insulating myself from contrary opinions, but I get that shit at work, and through newspaper articles and other blogs that I read, and from my family who sends me emails. And the occasional well-reasoned or legitimately curious but dissenting opinion here. Contrary to my public persona, I don't actually like getting into flame wars. I just really hate to let inaccuracies slide by uncontested and I'm not afraid to speak up, so that tends to lead me into flame wars (that and my gutter speech - I like accuracy but I also like casual speech, cussing, and sarcasm, none of which help me avoid flame wars). But I don't actually like confrontation at all. So these short tweets, with their inability to thoroughly discuss the topic at hand, their necessarily incomplete and inaccurate statements due to brevity, their high degree of short and hot tempers because of the brevity, their frequent misunderstandings, these short tweets tend to make me impatient with people who regularly disagree with me and I am much more likely to block them.
I have a follower in particular who never tweets a word to me that isn't a contradiction of something I tweeted earlier. And it's not just a difference of opinion, he's often demonstrably wrong or his tweets are incomplete or naive, only sometimes due to the length restriction. I once asked him why he even bothers to follow me since he never tweets an agreement of any sort, he only tweets disagreements. He said because agreements are boring and only disagreements were interesting conversation.
I've had quite interesting conversations that were not disagreements. Sometimes they're agreements, and sometimes it's merely one person imparting information to another, and sometimes it's just social interaction like flirting or joking. datan0de and I frequently engage in "disagreement" that is actually a form of flirting for us. The people I care about most and whose opinions I value most do not agree with me about everything. Getting people to validate my opinions is not my goal for conversation. But nothing but disagreement is also boring. It's tedious, it's stressful, and disagreement for the sake of disagreement is unproductive and uninteresting. I once dated a guy who enjoyed the intellectual challenge of disagreement (not debate) so much that he would often take a side he did not hold and pursue it to its ridiculous extreme just to keep the argument going. He is a former partner for a multitude of reasons, this being chief among them. When tacit and I disagree on something, even both of us having a penchant for sarcasm and dismissive statements doesn't prevent us from having a thorough discussion with an exchange of ideas. I am just as likely to come around to his way of thinking as I am to maintain my position when I disagree with him, depending upon the topic & the support for our respective sides. So it's not just that I want to be right and that I insist on converting everyone who disagrees with me. I mean, I do want to be right, but being able to "win" an argument or surround myself with yes-men are not the criteria for who gets to be a part of my life or social circle.
Twitter is not a good medium for an exchange of ideas. It's a medium for an exchange of funny YouTube links and in-group soundbites and discovering new blogs on the recommendation of friends and flirting, and even the occasional "this is what I'm doing right this moment that only people who care about me in general would give a shit about". I feel as though I'm able to remain connected better with long-distance friends and metamours whom I have not maintained as close ties with prior to Twitter. I think this is a Good Thing, although something that could be accomplished via other means (i.e. LiveJournal, and I suppose Facebook, if I didn't already have LJ and Twitter). But people who just want to argue with me, or who have significantly opposing viewpoints who hope to change my mind via 140 characters (particularly those who I have debunked or ridiculed already in LJ) can just go fuck off. I make much more liberal use of the "block" button in Twitter than here, or anywhere else (other than my personal email or IM clients).