A weekend spent on Twitter
I ended last newsletter with an observation about people quitting Twitter. Although I cannot properly know someone else’s subjective experience at any time - including what they experience on Twitter - I did implore anyone else considering leaving the platform to not delete their entire account. Deleting, it seemed to me, and though this might sound dramatic, was a little like burning a book. Your book may be long or short but it is a record and some others might appreciate it. In particular this particular book of Tweets that is your own stream and set of threads involves conversations with others. And those conversations are left depleted and confusing with your deletion.
If one simply leaves Twitter never to return then all your upsides are maintained and none of our downsides are obtained. It’s just common courtesy. Call it a kindness if you will. You aren’t hurt by text you leave behind anymore than you are hurt by emails you regret to have sent or sentences in books you might have rephrased.
So that’s one issue with Twitter. The other issue is the rampant pathologising of the platform. This occurs both on the right and left. There is furious agreement that Twitter can be damaging to the social and the psychological fabric. I’ve always resisted the impulse to readily agree with these sentiments. I really do think more speech is better. I really do think one can have fun on the platform and ignore the trolls. For me, if someone is genuinely unpleasant, I don’t block them. I mute them. Even before I heard Ricky Gervais say the same thing, I figured out myself that there was something about the person at the other end not knowing you simply were no longer hearing them anymore. They were, perhaps, screaming into the ether - Tweeting into the void. I thought to myself: well if they’re doing that in an attempt to get a rise out of me, they’re not using that same energy to go after someone else. It’s win for me and win for my imaginary protectorate. It may even be win for the “troll” who eventually realises that such an approach does not always bear fruit.
But some people apparently have a terrible experience on line…and keep coming back. I find this strange. Of course I am not Tweeting regularly to enumerate the evils committed by the deeply religious to put the majority of the planet off side. But I have been known to go pretty hard on anything politically to the left of Ayn Rand. Yes, I’m joking. She’s “off axis” as I always like to say. But most of all, of course, I do not have the number of followers that those who complain about the platform most tend to. If you’ve got more than a million followers, of course your experience is going to be wildly different from someone with less than 10% of that, much less 1% of that.
But I wanted to find out if I could have a broadly negative experience on Twitter…simply by being on Twitter. So I did a private first person experiment on myself. Twitter followers of mine may have noticed little different. I suppose I check Twitter 3 or 4 times a day in general. There are specific times. When I get up and make my first cup of tea - I take tea with Twitter. When editing my podcast - it’s a very long process and I’ll take a break with Twitter. When I watch the half hour commercial TV news in Australia at 6pm - I’ll simultaneously check Twitter. When I’m cooking dinner, my partner plays music loud, so we aren’t talking, and then - I’ll check Twitter - invariably getting something on the iPhone that needs to be wet wiped off later.
But if I’m writing, if I’m recording or if I’m reading which are the other 3 crucial aspects of making a podcast - I cannot read Twitter. I don’t like my “flow” broken when I write (including points for a podcast) - recording it’s out of the question and reading is the same. The books I read tend to make arguments that might take a chapter to reach the central conclusion of. If one “gives up” or takes a break, one can lose the gist of things.
So what did I do differently? Well this weekend just past I spent almost the entire weekend with Twitter. Australia was playing against Argentina in the Soccer/Football World Cup. I knew I’d have to be up earlier than normal if I wanted to catch the match - and I did so. Which put my regular weekend schedule out of schedule so I made the decision Friday I’d just do less of my usual stuff and spend more time on Twitter and lots more time Tweeting and see what came back. I wouldn’t do anything deliberately provocative or silly or entirely out of character. I just wanted to do much more of what I’d normally do. Would the negativity increase too? Surely it’s just a numbers game. However much negativity comes at one on Twitter per unit time must increase the total with increased use. Is it not cancelled out by all that fun and positivity? If we are led to believe common wisdom on this: human beings are supposed to have 10 compliments cancelled by 1 critique/insult. I can imagine that’s true in some cases: it would depend on the strength of the compliments and insults. Nine “that’s a nice shirt you have” is not going to make up for the one “everything you’ve ever done with your life is a waste of time and does nothing but make the world a worse place.”. I guess that’s two insults, but you get my point.
So commencing from a tweet on Friday morning about ChatGPT/OpenAI I spent the next 3 days Tweeting far more than usual. Would if have some terrible effect on my mind? Would I see the social decay out there? Might I become that dreaded “addicted” - unable to put the phone down and shaking if I didn’t get a fix within the next hour? Well here’s my experience. For the purpose of this newsletter I’m simply going to list the Tweets and the replies in question. I want to describe the context and give some more opinions on all these issues. I will do that on the audio podcast that accompanies this newsletter so if you want to hear that, you’ll have to hit play above. For what it’s worth this could be a fun format for part of the podcast/newsletter or even livestream. But as someone chided me recently: I’ve got too many product streams and it’s hard for followers to keep up. I agree. How do you think I feel? Actually I’m having fun otherwise I wouldn’t do it. That anyone pays any attention at all is a bonus. This is where my text comments end because I have a long list of Tweets to discuss and would rather not type out or prepare my comments. I’ll just reflect off the cuff on the content. The rule I set myself is to discuss any thread I contributed to (obviously that includes all those that I started as well) and any Tweet that I “liked”. I should say I used to use the “like” button as a bookmark. And I really did go back and check on those bookmarks (again, a function of being a podcaster of my kind - I find valuable stuff online) - but I have slightly changed my approach to this. One reason is that in Sam Harris explanation of why he quit Twitter he also explained he used a program to mass ban anyone who “liked” a particular tweet that was critical of him. Now I did not get included in that this time around (Sam actually followed me for years) - but I did used to sometimes “like” by which I meant “bookmarked” Tweets with which I did not agree. I’d like them because I’d think “well that’s a nice statement of a perspective I think is false but I can understand why people think it’s plausible” and so I’d bring it up on the podcast.
In the unlikely event you’re following along I begin with this Tweet I sent in response to someone on December 2nd
(and conclude with the final Tweet I sent on December 4th). Yes, technically I’m including part of “Friday” in my weekend. Without further ado - the audio awaits.
A weekend of Twitter