I always liked Holly Anderson's "Meet conversations where they are." Too many people are more than happy to argue online in bad faith. If you recognize that, you can walk away, or if you choose to engage, you understand the game in which you're playing.
While we're at it, the "If you don’t believe in it, why should anyone else?" comment is almost a verbatim quote from her, and I think about it all the time.
One thing I thought about as I wrote the "celebrities are just like us" part is how it infuriates me that Jason Isbell is funny on twitter in addition to being one of our greatest living songwriters. That's too many things for one person to be good at.
This is good advice. You underplayed the importance of cats and dogs though. There is no social media situation that can't be improved by randomly throwing in a picture of a dog. Seriously, who could stay mad at you while looking at Holly giving them the corgi thousand-mile stare?
I dunno, it’s not like I can remember the last straw with MySpace or any of the other platforms. I think for most people it’s a slow drift.
(Twitter’s place in the zeitgeist is more “supplemental content in news/sports articles/shows” than it is “everyone you know uses it”, most people engage with it second/third-hand, too)
They don't end with a door slamming, they end like a party fizzling out or a mall slowly dying. You just stop showing up, or you suddenly notice that everyone else stopped showing up.
You might be right! Twitter's implosion feels a lot more dramatic than past social networks, at least for the folks I'm seeing, but this close to the moment, it stays in our minds more clearly.
I'm probably in the minority, but I never "got" Twitter in the first place. It was exhausting and took too much time to try to follow conversations, much less develop friendships or connections.
"Likes are free. It costs nothing to share your support, to brighten someone’s day and let them know you’re paying attention to them. It feels pretty good to do so, too."
And as always, check your priors. (Which I know the doofuses made into a whole thing that people dunked on, but it's not bad advice, it was just poorly delivered.)
>>>If you can’t find them, try starting a food argument.
>>>Sometimes people are wrong, and there’s nothing you can do about it. (See item above.)
>>>Cats and dogs make everything better, even in the moments where they’re actively making things worse. (Those make for the best stories, frankly.)
These are good. I like Spencer's the place you are from sucks.
My advice is "be okay with others being wrong" and "assume you are mistaken/wrong." In other words even if you think you are 100% right, others can hold a different opinion and from another's perspective what you think/do may be 100% wrong. If you can identify what is wrong in your own thinking then it can help improve how you do things or what you think/believe/do.
And when it doubt remember the quote from Pogo "DON’T TAKE LIFE SO SERIOUS, SON … IT AIN’T NOHOW PERMANENT" which may be based on a quote from an early 20th century essay by Elbert Hubbard "Please do not take life quite so seriously--you surely will never get out of it alive."
I'm weird about this: I joined Twitter ages ago because a professor I had in law school used it to post discussion questions. I met some friends, then kept meeting friends. I always used Twitter to meet and talk to friends and friends of friends. It helps that I have never had a big following or gone viral - there is definitely a visibility threshold past which Twitter became a problem rather than a place to talk. And in a weird sort of way, the last dregs of Twitter with a lot of the writers/famous people gone has made that mission easier for those of us still left. I'm starting to feel like the kid who finally found her friend group at college first semester of senior year, y'know? Sigh.
A million years ago, Bomani changed his Twitter bio to "we weren't meant to know this much about each other," and for some reason, that really stuck in my head about how social media warps things.
Protect yourself and yours, but also be willing to meet new people and make new friends. It’s sometimes a difficult balance on todays internet where personal details can be used against someone making new friends is always great.
I'm board with everything except deep dish pizza as soup; it is widely understood that deep dish pizza is an extreme example (where carbLayers = 1) of lasagna.
I'd also suggest that people be open to reassessing why they are where they are. I found one of my best online communities because I came to study for bar trivia (in a topic area where, even though I wasn't very good I was the best at it for our team), and stuck around because the community was great. If I hadn't been able to look past "I'm only here to skim the surface to earn some beer," I would have missed out on a lot.
I always liked Holly Anderson's "Meet conversations where they are." Too many people are more than happy to argue online in bad faith. If you recognize that, you can walk away, or if you choose to engage, you understand the game in which you're playing.
I'm also a huge fan of her "they wanted to, so they did."
While we're at it, the "If you don’t believe in it, why should anyone else?" comment is almost a verbatim quote from her, and I think about it all the time.
Oh yeah, you have that and Brian Cook's "Sometimes people are just in charge of things" and the world makes more sense by exposing the nonsense.
Don't eat gas station sushi.
You’re not my doctor.
No? Then why did I remove your kidney?
Because I owed you money.
Pretty sure that was the gas station sushi
Don't call what you're wearin' an outfit. Don't ever say your car is broke. Don't worry about losin' your accent, a Southern man tells better jokes.
One thing I thought about as I wrote the "celebrities are just like us" part is how it infuriates me that Jason Isbell is funny on twitter in addition to being one of our greatest living songwriters. That's too many things for one person to be good at.
Whenever I think about this (apparently he can act, too), I remember that he got COVID tattooed on his arm. Nobody's perfect.
This is good advice. You underplayed the importance of cats and dogs though. There is no social media situation that can't be improved by randomly throwing in a picture of a dog. Seriously, who could stay mad at you while looking at Holly giving them the corgi thousand-mile stare?
https://youtu.be/j9yBPcn8IqU
In ten years, a common conversation starter will be "what was the last straw for Twitter with you?"
I dunno, it’s not like I can remember the last straw with MySpace or any of the other platforms. I think for most people it’s a slow drift.
(Twitter’s place in the zeitgeist is more “supplemental content in news/sports articles/shows” than it is “everyone you know uses it”, most people engage with it second/third-hand, too)
They don't end with a door slamming, they end like a party fizzling out or a mall slowly dying. You just stop showing up, or you suddenly notice that everyone else stopped showing up.
You might be right! Twitter's implosion feels a lot more dramatic than past social networks, at least for the folks I'm seeing, but this close to the moment, it stays in our minds more clearly.
it's a party ending because a bear showed up, or a mall going out of business because of a gas leak
I'm probably in the minority, but I never "got" Twitter in the first place. It was exhausting and took too much time to try to follow conversations, much less develop friendships or connections.
I think I joined at just the right moment; the feeling you describe is how I feel about things like TikTok
"You do not have to have an opinion on everything. Frankly, it feels great to sit one out from time to time."
I learned this in the past year or so, and it makes visits from my Father-in-law 10x more tolerable.
"Likes are free. It costs nothing to share your support, to brighten someone’s day and let them know you’re paying attention to them. It feels pretty good to do so, too."
/likes post
Gorram peer pressure.
As for advice, pick your battles. Know which ones are worth losing something over, and which are not.
Never buy the cheapest anything. It's usually cheapest because it's made poorly, not healthy, or manufactured using questionable labor.
Building off that second point, and tying it back to social media--if it seems to good to be true, it probably is.
And as always, check your priors. (Which I know the doofuses made into a whole thing that people dunked on, but it's not bad advice, it was just poorly delivered.)
>>>If you can’t find them, try starting a food argument.
>>>Sometimes people are wrong, and there’s nothing you can do about it. (See item above.)
>>>Cats and dogs make everything better, even in the moments where they’re actively making things worse. (Those make for the best stories, frankly.)
These are good. I like Spencer's the place you are from sucks.
My advice is "be okay with others being wrong" and "assume you are mistaken/wrong." In other words even if you think you are 100% right, others can hold a different opinion and from another's perspective what you think/do may be 100% wrong. If you can identify what is wrong in your own thinking then it can help improve how you do things or what you think/believe/do.
And when it doubt remember the quote from Pogo "DON’T TAKE LIFE SO SERIOUS, SON … IT AIN’T NOHOW PERMANENT" which may be based on a quote from an early 20th century essay by Elbert Hubbard "Please do not take life quite so seriously--you surely will never get out of it alive."
Hmm, if empanadas are better fried, should I be frying my Pop-Tarts...
It works for ravioli and peirogi, soooo
I'm weird about this: I joined Twitter ages ago because a professor I had in law school used it to post discussion questions. I met some friends, then kept meeting friends. I always used Twitter to meet and talk to friends and friends of friends. It helps that I have never had a big following or gone viral - there is definitely a visibility threshold past which Twitter became a problem rather than a place to talk. And in a weird sort of way, the last dregs of Twitter with a lot of the writers/famous people gone has made that mission easier for those of us still left. I'm starting to feel like the kid who finally found her friend group at college first semester of senior year, y'know? Sigh.
>>>Cincinnati chili is a form of gumbo.
All chili is curry.
Was it you who re-posted that article about the goodbye hug at the college graduation party? That's kinda how I feel on Twitter these days.
As for advice, I think about what Bomani Jones says a lot. Don't mess up you're money trying to make people laugh.
Yes, it was! For anyone else, it's a great read: https://moose-on-the-loose.com/2023/05/08/the-hug-goodbye/
And that's great advice.
A million years ago, Bomani changed his Twitter bio to "we weren't meant to know this much about each other," and for some reason, that really stuck in my head about how social media warps things.
Protect yourself and yours, but also be willing to meet new people and make new friends. It’s sometimes a difficult balance on todays internet where personal details can be used against someone making new friends is always great.
I'm board with everything except deep dish pizza as soup; it is widely understood that deep dish pizza is an extreme example (where carbLayers = 1) of lasagna.
I'd also suggest that people be open to reassessing why they are where they are. I found one of my best online communities because I came to study for bar trivia (in a topic area where, even though I wasn't very good I was the best at it for our team), and stuck around because the community was great. If I hadn't been able to look past "I'm only here to skim the surface to earn some beer," I would have missed out on a lot.