![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
- Fri, 13:17: RT @NightValeRadio: I'm a little teapot/Short and stout/Here are my talons/Here is my snout
- Fri, 19:03: My second Monster of the Week game wrapped up a little early, but everyone had a blast beating up a sand monster with magic glass swords.
- Fri, 19:03: I'd like a second to publicly thank @funranium for letting me pick his brain regarding the sand monster.
- Fri, 19:19: Now to drop my stuff off at my hotel room, then to get grub.
- Fri, 20:10: Ah, before I forget, my Monster of the Week game earlier had The Spooky, The Flake, The Snoop, The Expert, and The Sidekick in play.
- Fri, 20:51: I hate to be That Guy, but the novelty of the near-constant live music in the plaza wore off pretty early on Thursday. #GenCon2015
- Sat, 11:12: Cardhalla, day 3. It all comes down tonight. #GenCon2015 http://t.co/68GBC0e9CX
- Sat, 11:56: RT @RoomPartyGame: Looking for a good time--er, a wild night--uh, an awesome party? A ROOM PARTY?! We're at @Gen_Con booth #2937! http://t.…
- Sat, 11:57: Is it wrong that I'm factoring whether or not I have to stand in line in the sun into my lunch decisions?
Aug. 1st, 2015
Some semi-random thoughts about Twitter
Aug. 1st, 2015 07:17 pmThis is going to seem random as fuck because I'm still at Gencon, albeit taking a few minutes to relax before going out to hunt down dinner. But it's a thought that's been percolating, and there's a part of me that really wanted to whip out the portable keyboard and type something but none of my story projects are currently yelling for my attention.
So.
I really miss the Discover tab on Twitter. I mean, I don't like everything all of my friends like, so it'd give me a lot of stuff I'm not necessarily into. Also Kardashians, which I'm also not into.0 But it would also draw my attention to a lot of things that caught my attention in a positive way. There's more than a few people on Twitter I follow because I saw someone else's Favorite of one of their posts, or something to that extent. Sometimes Twitter will experiment with taking random people that people I follow find interesting enough to follow or a favorited tweet, but that doesn't really work for me because it's being shoved in my face. It's interrupting my normal reading experience whereas the Discover tab was something I could use when I wanted it and at my own pace. "Y'know, I'm a little bored. Twitter, give me some shit my friends like, please. Thank you." And then, when Twitter served it up, I could spend several minutes just thumbing through posts until it ran out of stuff and started repeating itself or just said "Okay. No more. You've reached the end of Twitter."
And what have they replaced it with? This inane, asinine Trending list. At any given time, at least half of this extremely limited Trending list is composed of posts about musicians I don't know or care about, sports I honestly couldn't care less about1, and at least one National Random Pointless Bullshit Day hashtag clearly cooked up by some marketinggeniuscharlatan who wants there to be a National Day for something every frigging day. And then at least one 'trend' about the latest big-name movie. Beyond that, there might be a single news item that I should genuinely get caught up on to remain current with the world, surrounded by more things neither I nor my friends are likely to care about.
But that's it. With the increasing Facebookization of Twitter, maybe I'm just becoming less and less of their target audience. Because I follow less than a hundred people.2 And I'd be surprised if more than a quarter of them post with any given regularity. But at any given time, I'm far more interested in things they care about than I am about what some mathmatically determined average of Everyone On Twitter jerks off to.3
I'm just curious to see what will happen when someone gets it in their head to start a competing microblogging site with the concept of "What Twitter was like for the first couple of years. That's it."
That might be interesting to watch. I wonder if that will trend at all.
0-- I mean, I know I'm only 34 and in internet years that means I'm 90, but I'm still not entirely sure who the fuck the Kardashians are, let alone why I should care about anything they do. No, really.
1-- Not necessarily hating on sports in general. Not being That Guy. But at any given time, my likelihood to care about a given incident in sports is about the same as my likelihood to actively and deliberately read the comments on a political news article. It's not that it never happens, but it's a pretty rare event.
2-- I don't believe in following more people than I can keep up with. I also don't believe in following a bunch of people just to follow them and using alternate clients or lists to narrow down my 'default' timeline to just the ones I actually want to read. I follow the people I want to read on a regular basis. No more. Sometimes less, depending on circumstances.
3-- I follow even fewer people on Google+, yet their reshares alone (not even counting links they're suggesting or just posting about stuff that they care about) give me a more interesting user experience than the Trending list has ever done.
So.
I really miss the Discover tab on Twitter. I mean, I don't like everything all of my friends like, so it'd give me a lot of stuff I'm not necessarily into. Also Kardashians, which I'm also not into.0 But it would also draw my attention to a lot of things that caught my attention in a positive way. There's more than a few people on Twitter I follow because I saw someone else's Favorite of one of their posts, or something to that extent. Sometimes Twitter will experiment with taking random people that people I follow find interesting enough to follow or a favorited tweet, but that doesn't really work for me because it's being shoved in my face. It's interrupting my normal reading experience whereas the Discover tab was something I could use when I wanted it and at my own pace. "Y'know, I'm a little bored. Twitter, give me some shit my friends like, please. Thank you." And then, when Twitter served it up, I could spend several minutes just thumbing through posts until it ran out of stuff and started repeating itself or just said "Okay. No more. You've reached the end of Twitter."
And what have they replaced it with? This inane, asinine Trending list. At any given time, at least half of this extremely limited Trending list is composed of posts about musicians I don't know or care about, sports I honestly couldn't care less about1, and at least one National Random Pointless Bullshit Day hashtag clearly cooked up by some marketing
But that's it. With the increasing Facebookization of Twitter, maybe I'm just becoming less and less of their target audience. Because I follow less than a hundred people.2 And I'd be surprised if more than a quarter of them post with any given regularity. But at any given time, I'm far more interested in things they care about than I am about what some mathmatically determined average of Everyone On Twitter jerks off to.3
I'm just curious to see what will happen when someone gets it in their head to start a competing microblogging site with the concept of "What Twitter was like for the first couple of years. That's it."
That might be interesting to watch. I wonder if that will trend at all.
0-- I mean, I know I'm only 34 and in internet years that means I'm 90, but I'm still not entirely sure who the fuck the Kardashians are, let alone why I should care about anything they do. No, really.
1-- Not necessarily hating on sports in general. Not being That Guy. But at any given time, my likelihood to care about a given incident in sports is about the same as my likelihood to actively and deliberately read the comments on a political news article. It's not that it never happens, but it's a pretty rare event.
2-- I don't believe in following more people than I can keep up with. I also don't believe in following a bunch of people just to follow them and using alternate clients or lists to narrow down my 'default' timeline to just the ones I actually want to read. I follow the people I want to read on a regular basis. No more. Sometimes less, depending on circumstances.
3-- I follow even fewer people on Google+, yet their reshares alone (not even counting links they're suggesting or just posting about stuff that they care about) give me a more interesting user experience than the Trending list has ever done.