37 Comments

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.

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May 10, 2023Liked by Scott Hines

Don't eat gas station sushi.

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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.

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May 10, 2023Liked by Scott Hines

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?

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May 10, 2023Liked by Scott Hines

https://youtu.be/j9yBPcn8IqU

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May 10, 2023Liked by Scott Hines

In ten years, a common conversation starter will be "what was the last straw for Twitter with you?"

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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.

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"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.

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"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.

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May 10, 2023·edited May 10, 2023

>>>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."

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Hmm, if empanadas are better fried, should I be frying my Pop-Tarts...

It works for ravioli and peirogi, soooo

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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.

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>>>Cincinnati chili is a form of gumbo.

All chili is curry.

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founding

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.

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founding

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.

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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.

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