{"id":2687,"date":"2010-06-11T15:17:28","date_gmt":"2010-06-11T22:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/?p=2687"},"modified":"2010-06-11T15:42:14","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T22:42:14","slug":"the-one-where-he-was-kind-of-a-dick-about-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/the-one-where-he-was-kind-of-a-dick-about-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"The one where he was kind of a dick about Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

“How about some follow-back love, bro?” – some guy on Twitter<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let me explain what I think Twitter is for.<\/s> Hmm.<\/p>\n

Let me explain what I don’t think Twitter is for.<\/s> Hmmm. No.<\/p>\n

Let me explain why I’m not following you on Twitter? Yes.<\/p>\n

It’s not personal.<\/p>\n

No, I don’t mean that as some kind of reassurance; that’s my explanation: “it’s not personal.” Let me explain.<\/p>\n

Dig around on the internet and you’ll find some kind of data analysis that says that most of the traffic on Twitter is generated by about 10% of the users. In my own experience, about 90% of that traffic looks something like this:
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Wait, what?<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

By which I mean it’s noise: “inspirational” retweets, links to websites without any kind of context, and (on a good day) maybe something like “heading out for the day, it’s been a tough one!”<\/p>\n

I don’t hate stuff like that; it doesn’t rate that kind of emotional response — I just don’t care. I don’t want to read some dead guy’s famous quote unless I also get to see why it matters to you; I don’t want to click on a link without reading why you think it’s cool; and I don’t want to know what you’re doing.<\/p>\n

I want to know what you’re thinking<\/em>. If you want to tell me what you’re thinking about what you’re doing, though, that’s fine<\/em>. Telepathy, people: that’s what twitter is for.<\/p>\n

I have X followers on twitter. In turn, I follow X – Y people, where Y = the number of people who give me no indication of who they are when I go and look at their twitter feed, or who seem more like a cheap plastic bullhorn than a person.<\/p>\n

X – Y = Z, the people I ‘know’ on twitter (or whom I feel like I can get to know, thanks to the way they use twitter).<\/p>\n

I like Neil Gaiman as an author — I dig his books. I also follow him on Twitter, but the one doesn’t really have anything to do with the other — if his twitter feed was nothing but links to his next public appearance and the release dates for his next project? Unfollow.<\/p>\n

Conversely, I may not agree with everything Roger Ebert has to say, but I feel so connected<\/em> to the guy — to the sense that, after years of reading pages and pages of his movie reviews, I finally have a true sense of who he is as a person — that I cut him some slack when he gets wound up about some subject on which we don’t see eye-to-eye.<\/p>\n

I don’t agree 100% with ANYONE<\/em>, but I am extremely forgiving of any differences between myself and my friends.<\/p>\n

And yeah, these twitterfolken<\/em> count as friends (insofar as it would matter to them) — I afford them tremendous leniency because they have been willing to share some real and tangible portion of themselves with me; they act like people.<\/p>\n

That is what people do.<\/p>\n

That is what – to me – Twitter is for.<\/p>\n

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#this<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“How about some follow-back love, bro?” – some guy on Twitter Let me explain what I think Twitter is for. Hmm. Let me explain what I don’t think Twitter is for. Hmmm. No. Let me explain why I’m not following you on Twitter? Yes. It’s not personal. No, I don’t mean that as some kind … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The one where he was kind of a dick about Twitter”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[213,30],"class_list":["post-2687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musing","tag-rantifesto","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2687"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2699,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions\/2699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}