h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just got through reading this: Why I hate Twitter http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/239379/why-i-hate-twitter

Well. Several things stand out here, but first some disclosure. I have two Twitter accounts, one for personal and one for business. Both are locked and I've never tweeted a single tweet in the three or four years I've had them both.

So, what about the article? Let's start at the end. "The vision of Twitter — and remember, I was an evangelist for it — was the notion that we could share information and ideas in a civil manner."

I think the writer is forgetting one very basic thing there - the world (and social networks) is made up of people, and most people, when not constrained by regulations or controls, revert to the mentality of the school playground. By the time Twitter took off at the 2007 SXSW conference we'd already had plenty of evidence of how people behave online following years of messageboards, chatrooms and yes, places like h2g2. SXSW 2007 was nearly eight years ago so by that point we were already used to comments sections on all kinds of websites and pages, and it must have been quite evident by then how some people behave online. Have you ever read the comments on YouTube pages? Dear Bob, do those people really exist?

So no, to expect a civil discourse on anything like Twitter is like expecting an easy solution to the gun debate in America or a British politician to stand up to Paxo or Eddie Mair and tell them to stop being such a winker (misprint). Excessive optimism.

"Twitter sucks you into small, petty battles"
See above. It's common to every online discussion format. The article could just as easily have been titled 'Why I hate the Internet' or 'Why I Hate Social Networks in general".

"It's a lot like the transformation of the 1960s. It started out being about free love, sharing ideas, and changing the world, but somehow we ended up being more about Altamont and Charles Manson. Somewhere along the line, our optimism faded."

Yeah, that's pretty the way things go when large numbers of people are involved in something, especially when most of them don't know each and/or aren't talking directly to each other. We all know the problem - it's just a little too easy to be mean when you're not fact to face with someone. For a lot of people it's not just easy, it's fun.

But there's another aspect - business. Whenever anything gets popular business wants a slice of it, and as soon as business gets involved the whole thing gets just a little... grubby. Business always bends things to its own cause. The internet was once a Utopia of freedom and fun with a few business intrusions, but they were working within the internet's framework when html was pretty simple and anyone with a bit of the in them could set up a home page and the web was full of enthusiasts.

Now the internet is one big marketing tool with businesses and tracking companies following your every move and compiling information about what kind of person they think you are so they can target you with more marketing (counter-productive in my opinion but that's another conversation). Pages take longer to load because your browser has to pull in data from multiple servers, half of which are doing nothing more than serving advertising and tracking data.

To relate that directly to Twitter, I follow several breweries and bars because I want to keep up with what they're doing, but I've turned off retweets from most of them. Some of them retweet any and all mentions of themselves.

"Drinking a XXXXX Amber by @XXXXX @Tavern On Main — http://untp.itXXXXX Retweeted by XXXXX Brew"

"Drinking a XXXXX IPA by @XXXXX at @bjsrestaurants — http://untp.itXXXXX
Retweeted by XXXXX Brew"

Others get around that by copying and pasting any tweet that says how good they are in a nauseating stream of self-congratulation.

"Thank you! RT @XXXXX: Eternally grateful for a bakery that keeps bar hours. ILY XXXXX"

"Cool! RT @XXXXX: Picking up speciality bread for our Peruvian PopUp tonight #XXXXX thanks @XXXXX & @XXXXX!"

"Thanks so much! RT @XXXXX: Happy 1-year anniversary to @XXXXX - stop by and visit them! They are open until 2 AM!"

I think I might have to stop following anyone who does that.

"past generations could mostly leave their problems at work. Their bullies and bosses didn't follow them home — didn't hound them on their iPhones."

Well, that's a matter of choice for most of us. All you have to do is not look at your account. If you have to use it for your work in whatever capacity that can be difficult, but again, when did work become something we have to be immersed in every waking hour? When I had a business where I was essentially on call I still made the decision not to answer the phone after 9pm or if I decided to have a day off. That was my time.

"as Twitter becomes meaner and coarser, more and more people will begin checking out. Some may, for business reasons, remain on Twitter, but they will join me in changing how they use it."

If only. The stupid will always drown out the sensible.

Yeah... The writer seems to feel he's at the mercy of twitter. I've had no problems clicking the [unfollow] tab. I'm pretty selective with who I follow in the first place. There have even been a few that I've unfollowed, not because I didn't like what they had to say, but simply that I couldn't keep up. They were too prolific.

I have very rarely bothered with trends or hashtags so I'm probably missing what makes twitter, twitter in the first place.

I just follow a few folks and just a few folks follow me.

Simple.

(Although, I could use a decent twitter client at work. I would love to be able to block the hashtag #totp, especially on Thursday afternoons here when Evibenstein and fords get at it. (not really an issue as I have little problem scrolling past the flood. )

I avoided Twitter for a long time because it had the reputation of being the place where people record the minutiae of their lives, as if everyone needs to know what everyone else has just done. Triviality to the nth degree. But I looked at it for a while and then figured that it would be useful for gathering information, and it it often is.

when i finally found out how it works, I thought it was fabulous. But you do have to discriminate.

but it is a great way to watch things like The Andrew Marr Show (with the hashtag open) or University Challenge.

I agree with most of what you've said. Most of his criticisms apply to the Internet as a whole, rather than Twitter specifically. I don't think his comparison with the idealism of the '60s is all wrong - there was a naive belief, among a lot of cyberspace pioneers, which overlooked how good the corporate world is at catching up and co-opting 'counter-culture'.

My own experience of Twitter is more positive than a lot of other sites I regularly use. I haven't found it as feral as flame-wars elsewhere - although I know it can be for some people. Perhaps because this is something that affects people with a public profile, more than a peasant like me. Perhaps because I switch off when I'm bored or annoyed by it.

That said, though, the people I follow are mostly in a couple of different groups - general interest/amusement, politics/news/unionism, outdoorsy things, local things, and then a smattering of people I know well personally. Some - most, probably - have pretty forthright views in things, yet it never seems to get that barbaric.

In a way, Twitter's what you do with it: obviously my experience will be different from that of a conservative pundit in the USA, because we use it to read and say completely different things. In terms of usefulness, though, it's one of the most practical and useful tools I've used online.

With the hashtag open? What does that mean Sho?

I must admit, one of my favorite things on twitter is to see Ricky Gervais slap down eedjits. I love that he points out that if anyone is offended by anything... ANYTHING, it's not his problem. But if they get offended by something he tweets... IN HIS FEED.. they chose to follow it in the first place. Most of the time it's some religious w demanding that he respect their beliefs and stop talking about his own.

Oh, btw... I just noticed I'm about 7hrs behind on reading twitter mostly because it's been so busy here on h2g2 today.

Twitter's updating has been bugging me for a few months now because it often doesn't. Update, that is.

The tab always has the favicon, then the number of new tweets in brackets (or not), then 'Twitter'. Sometimes it'll sit there for an hour or more with no new tweets showing, even though the timestamp on old tweets continues to update - 30m, 1h, 3h etc, so I reload the page and lo! ten new tweets appear. Seven hours it went for one day.

Or it'll say 'Five new tweets' so I hit the bar to load them, which they do, and a few seconds later another half dozen or more appear.

It's not just you.

Oh, thanks for ruining my persecution complex

I didn't say you don't deserve it.

I have a Twitter account that I used once. I doubt if I could remember how to sign back into it. It seemed like too much bother for very little return. I know, I should have given it more of a chance, at least tried to get used to it. What can I say? I'm an old lady who is easily frustrated.

I have to agree. It's just another thing that's designed to be followed and kept up with. There are already too many of those in my life. The account I use for business can rack up 80 or 90 tweets in an hour at times. It would take me that long to read all of them and their attendant links and images if I tried. Then there'd be 80 more to go through

I generally find Twitter rather amusing and often entertaining, but that is probably largely down to the lunatics I follow... I use it to keep up with a few local news things, and some shops/bisunnesses I use, but don't seem to be checking it now, as often as once I did... I've never seen any real nastyness on it, but again that's probably down to the lunatic nutcases I follow I've got a bit out of the habbit of using it at the moment though... and like others have to try and filter out all the #totp tweets from fords et al or any of the other ones that are to do with TV/celib/film/media/stuff