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Comment by jyriand | Hacker News Reader

This must be a divine intervention. I was just about to tweet some insomniac crazy tweets and got an error.

Whenever you are about to post something, anywhere in general, ask yourself: Why? What are you trying to get out of that? Are you adding meaningful information? Are you trying to advance a particular cause (which can just be a small personal one, but at least any cause at all)?

Note that I'm obviously not saying any online discourse is for naught.

But during and after your "social media experience", for lack of a better term, do you feel better or worse, and if not better, did you at least accomplish something?

Usually I don’t post random stuff. But haven’t slept for a few days because of stomach flu, feeling like a drunk, and this inhibits my judgment.

Understandable, sleep deprivation sucks.

Hope you get some sleep soon!

Also "What do I hope the reader will get from what I post?"

But you have to then be honest about the answer to that. Especially if religious or political conversion is what you hope they get.

Conversely, as long as you're not someone who regularly finds yourself being a jerk, it's okay to just experience social interactions. Most of my internet posting could accurately be described as "shooting the shit", and I feel okay about that.

True, if it really is social interaction. But especially on Twitter (when I still bothered using it), I saw so many stream-of-consciousness dumping of thoughts on there, which mostly only managed to gather a few irrelevant likes, that I seriously wonder whether the poster really gets anything out of it, or is just used to shouting out every little thought that they have into the void.

This also goes for answers to tweets, where even on highly technical, niche topics, a pretty large share of the replies seem either performative ("I'm going to ask a question to impress OP, the answer does not really matter!"), or useless (some tired meme, if it was ever funny), or just plain nonsense ("I don't really understand the technical matter behind that, but here's some nonsensical technical question that seems vaguely related").

I think in face-to-face social situations, most people would be much better at weighing whether their interjection is worth the effort and the attention.

I was about to Tweet for the first time in many months when I ran into this and looked up what was going on, bizarre timing. Good thing though, stopped me from coming back!

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