I've been using twitter for 10 years, and it's generally been "OK" (but still net positive, it helped me get an internship and a job). Last year twitter became an incredibly positive thing in my life (in spite of the exodus and things generally getting a little worse). A lot of that change for me is echoed in this post!
Every time I see people commenting on here saying "people still use that?" or "why would you do this to yourself" etc, I get it, I've been there, there's a lot of shit out there. But I stumbled on basically this path he describes (made a brand new account, stopped being self conscious, just started following interesting people and replying to interesting things) and I feel like it has supercharged my learning & connecting with cool people and maybe even "dark smoky rooms full of interesting people" (nothing smoky yet but getting there!)
If you're going to use Twitter, you should regard yourself as a political entity.
If you make any remotely political statement that someone disagrees with or even if someone is just feeling malevolent, within the current twitter moderation regime, nothing stops anyone from smearing you, editing screenshots of your tweet, completing fabricating tweets, doxxing you, posting your home address, sending death threats in DMs, posting death threats in comments, whipping up mobs to contact your employer or people that have ever been affiliated with you. You can call for people's death and those comments do not get removed. Google and other search engines aggressively index Twitter and results affiliated with your name will rank highly.
If you intend to use twitter I would strongly recommend creating a pseudo-anonymous account or if you do want to use twitter under your real name, you should treat your persona as you would in a large corporate setting.
This is good advice. Especially the parts about filtering the timeline and your engagement to get what you like out of twitter.
Meta commentary: Twitter mostly serves the same function and has communities around most of the same subjects it always has. I tried the fediverse and bluesky and they resembled the intellectually incurious bubbles I would imagine gab and truthsocial are like, but from the other side of the political sphere. In Bluesky communities in particular I saw a lot of open harassment across sites and into the physical realm very highly promoted. Worse yet, none of these facilitate the kind of personal interactions with prominent figures in tech/my-favorite-hobby/public life.
I haven't tried and will not be trying threads, so I can't comment there.
Otherwise, all these alternatives are just... boring, I suppose? Overly consumed by politics? Echochambers? It just feels like reddit, in that there's a homogeneous Borg spending its time meta-commenting on things happening on twitter or tiktok.
Twitter's pretty good at showing you what you engage in. So if you find yourself surrounded by content you hate, follow the advice in the link (ignore and aggressively mute content you don't like - participate in ways promote content you do like).
8 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 32.2 ms ] thread1. Don’t.
2. (For experts only) Don’t, yet.
Every time I see people commenting on here saying "people still use that?" or "why would you do this to yourself" etc, I get it, I've been there, there's a lot of shit out there. But I stumbled on basically this path he describes (made a brand new account, stopped being self conscious, just started following interesting people and replying to interesting things) and I feel like it has supercharged my learning & connecting with cool people and maybe even "dark smoky rooms full of interesting people" (nothing smoky yet but getting there!)
Everything I've ever tweeted is dross :'(
Is this a good thing? Was this ever a good thing?
If you make any remotely political statement that someone disagrees with or even if someone is just feeling malevolent, within the current twitter moderation regime, nothing stops anyone from smearing you, editing screenshots of your tweet, completing fabricating tweets, doxxing you, posting your home address, sending death threats in DMs, posting death threats in comments, whipping up mobs to contact your employer or people that have ever been affiliated with you. You can call for people's death and those comments do not get removed. Google and other search engines aggressively index Twitter and results affiliated with your name will rank highly.
If you intend to use twitter I would strongly recommend creating a pseudo-anonymous account or if you do want to use twitter under your real name, you should treat your persona as you would in a large corporate setting.
Meta commentary: Twitter mostly serves the same function and has communities around most of the same subjects it always has. I tried the fediverse and bluesky and they resembled the intellectually incurious bubbles I would imagine gab and truthsocial are like, but from the other side of the political sphere. In Bluesky communities in particular I saw a lot of open harassment across sites and into the physical realm very highly promoted. Worse yet, none of these facilitate the kind of personal interactions with prominent figures in tech/my-favorite-hobby/public life.
I haven't tried and will not be trying threads, so I can't comment there.
Otherwise, all these alternatives are just... boring, I suppose? Overly consumed by politics? Echochambers? It just feels like reddit, in that there's a homogeneous Borg spending its time meta-commenting on things happening on twitter or tiktok.
Twitter's pretty good at showing you what you engage in. So if you find yourself surrounded by content you hate, follow the advice in the link (ignore and aggressively mute content you don't like - participate in ways promote content you do like).
Or X or whatever Musk is calling it this week.