Comment by huevosabio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by huevosabio | Hacker News Reader

Some thoughts:

> Megathreads about AI, thoughtful, longform narratives that could have been blog posts...

Honestly, the long form tweets became a signal to just ignore that tweet. I unfollow or block users that tweet long form often.

> The people in my feed—most of whom I’m not following, by the way—

Yea, just use the chrono-tab ("following"). Only usable version of Twitter.

> love posting for engagement. Some of them love it so much that they offer courses teaching other people how to do it—which amplifies this godforsaken death spiral even further.

This is so bizarre to watch.

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I think Twitter is usable only if you stick to the chronological tab which has only your follows and putting non-trivial effort to clean your follows periodically. Unfollow and block people aggressively. Outrage-focused account? Blocked. Grift? Unfollow/block. Random-ass comment pushing some political angle? Block. I block even people that don't share follows if I got to see a tweet I just don't like.

Social media generates a lot of waste, and good platforms provide a way for you to remove the waste from your experience. Otherwise, the end state of these types of networks is LinkedIn: a useful tool hidden beneath the massive pile of social media waste.

Even ChatGPT can generate generic LinkedIn grift: https://chat.openai.com/share/3585085b-5407-4d48-b6e3-12d3cb...

> Honestly, the long form tweets became a signal to just ignore that tweet. I unfollow or block users that tweet long form often.

Even though I don't use Twitter much any more, I fully agree here. Whenever I see the "[thread emoji] 1/?" I'm already done.

I can't even fathom why anyone would put the energy in these "thread" style tweets. Twitter content will forever remain fundamentally ephemeral: it's hard to find my own tweets from years back, let alone someone else's I found insightful.

The normal tweet format works well for ephemera, it's a medium for shower thoughts and sloganeering. Similar to how a typical child's sand shovel is correct tool for building sandcastles. Twitter threads feel like someone is handing out full sized shovels for work you know will be lost for ever when the next tide comes in.

> Similar to how a typical child's sand shovel is correct tool for building sandcastles.

I am certainly going to steal that analogy!

> Twitter content will forever remain fundamentally ephemeral:

I've bookmarked a "thread of threads" from a user or two. Even that was a half-baked solution though. Since they've started limiting public (not logged in) access again i haven't bothered.

>Even though I don't use Twitter much any more, I fully agree here. Whenever I see the "[thread emoji] 1/?" I'm already done.

Some of the best content on Twitter is on threads 1/? - from programming lore, to story telling, to any kind of analysis.

Small tweets are usually just advertising (in different guises), gossip, juvenile attempts at humor, hate, or (at best) some breaking news, you can find elsewhere with more depth.

Their lists feature is a massively undervalued feature. Pretty certain if lists was deprecated I would disband Twitter.

I don't use it all, I should give it a try!

Even Twitter doesn't know about Twitter lists. They don't show ads.

Lists kept me engaged with Twitter for a few years longer than I would have otherwise stuck around. Definitely a great feature.

I think this is largely correct. The problem for me is that doing that is a lot of work, and the benefit I get from it doesn't even come close to justifying that work.

> I block even people that don't share follows if I got to see a tweet I just don't like.

What does “don’t share follows” mean?

Here I mean someone that I don't follow nor do they follow anyone that I follow.

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