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Comment by ljf | Hacker News Reader

Posted this before (and it is a bad analogy I am sure) but I find moaning that something is in twitter is akin to moaning that someone told a story in a pub.

Pubs are noisy, and busy, and distracting, and I don't like them, and they aren't great for kids at night...

But it doesn't matter - the person was there, their friends were there, they had a story they wanted to tell and they told it in a way they enjoyed.

End of. Great if someone videoed it so others who don't like pubs could see it too, but mainly that doesn't happen. Just accept that some people like different things than you, and if it bothers you - take their content and blog about it, critique it and share it. But don't tell the story teller to change - especially if you want them to head somewhere where their friends are not... The point of a good story is to entertain an audience, wherever they may be.

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Except twitter is a choice made explicitly. It's like you are planning to make a lecture to your friends about an important subject, and of all possible venues you choose the noisiest, most packed pub, so your friends have to go there even though otherwise they wouldn't.

If you swear that pub has the best fish and chips, your friends might just begrudgingly accept your offer.

But it doesn't. The fish is rotten and the chips are cold and mushy. And the staff is abusive and rude, and you risk getting a beer bottle broken over your head any minute. The only reason why they come there is you. And that noisy pub makes billions of dollars - because people keep coming to it for no reason other than "my friends are there" - not noticing that their friends are there only because they wanted to find you, and if you found a better place, they'd follow you gladly. As Substack, for example, proved nicely.

(Writer of the post here)

I really like this analogy as it gives a different perspective. Thanks for that.

In fairness to me though, I never told anyone to change - I simply gave my opinion then questioned why people find it useful and get value from it.

> In fairness to me though, I never told anyone to change - I simply gave my opinion then questioned why people find it useful and get value from it.

Though, in fairness to ljf, your tl;dr at the top says "Please stop; write a blog post instead."

Cheers for the reply, I can't lie that in many ways I can agree with you, but at the same time twitter is where (across 2 or three different accounts) my contacts are. I've tried blogging in the past and felt like shouting in an empty room. At least on twitter I'll get some feedback.

I'd love to move all my contacts to a new service, but if I went off and blogged they are unlikely to follow me and as I can tell from my tweets, are unlikely to click on the links I post already.

All locations and services have their downsides, but I try to turn to the one where I'll have the most reach and personally get value from replies. In truth that means I do most of my 'story telling' face to face or on WhatsApp to closed groups or individuals ;)

Threads hack the algorithm by driving up interaction, though. It’d be like if you were in a pub with millions of other people and instead of being able to talk to anyone the owner started recommending people to talk to based on little submissions by enterprising CEO of Mes.

Hi welcome to Jack’s. Drinks? What? No, but see that group of people over there… that dude (he/him) has quite the story to tell about the pitfalls of using css transforms when rendering responsive content on a certain older version of webkit. And see that group over to the left… that person (they/them) is real angry about something I have no idea what but other people are listening so you better head over. Oh and please walk through the queue… mind my little sign spinners if their wares interest you do entertain their incredible offers. Off you go!

I think Discord (and possibly still IRC) is the digital pub.

I really don’t think any normal person is posting threads on Twitter because it’s algorithmically advantageous to them.

Most actively-posting accounts on Twitter are not "normal people", but rather either corporate PR brand ambassadors, or the same sorts of social climbers who write blog posts on LinkedIn. Of course they do what's algorithmically advantageous. That's why they're bothering to post to Twitter in the first place, instead of/in addition to the six other social networks they maintain a presence on.

I'm not sure mostnormal people are posting on Twitter, by that definition. It's a social network with global visibility of everything - you become an "influencer" the moment your account experiences even a modicum of success.

I wonder how many normal people are on twitter in the first place. I typically wait for news aggregators to share the thread with me. I don't need to drink from a firehose when a cup of water is all I need.

I would say I’m pretty normal and I frequent Twitter since it has a lot of content and instant news and instant discussions surrounding such news.

What is the metric for normal? Are we normal ? What’s the ratio between the general population and those who program? And to go even deeper, those who care about Programming, Cyber security, and tech news to frequent Hacker News in the first place? I would say Twitter population, lurkers and all , are a more accurate representation of the general population than HN is. You guys aren’t just quantifying the content not being shared by lurkers.

I like being able to respond to specific bits of what people have to say. While it has the distraction and noisy downside of a conversation occurring linearly in time, to me, that ability makes it better than a linear conversation in that way. Discord is now getting that with threads, though.

> is akin to moaning that someone told a story in a pub.

There is a huge difference though. A person telling a story in a pub is basically trying mainly to have a good time with friends that are immediately there. There are no “pub influencers”. For the most part, news articles don’t go around quoting pub conversations. With Twitter, there is a more performative aspect. The use of Twitter is not just about sharing a good story with friends, but rather a desire to be known more broadly as a good story teller.

It is this aspect that turns a lot of people off to Twitter.

I don't think you've been to many bars

Thank you for this. I love many blogs, but as you know many blogs out there are trees falling in the forest with no one around to hear them. Great coherent (and interesting) thoughts are just hard to consolidate in the blogging form factor. Getting a following is even harder and in todays world linking to blog posts is less likely to get readership. That said, I have no qualms with twitter threads as a medium for disseminating knowledge. It works in the public square for better or worse.

I think this is a good analogy. But isn't it possible that some people really do not know that they should go on youtube and record their stories? It seems like the argument is trying to a priori settle the question of whether you should apply "Voice or exit" [1]

1 https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

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