Comment by gdulli
7 years ago
It's not terrible. Twitter just isn't your preferred venue so you find it unnatural. It's natural for me to read and for others to read and for the author to have written on Twitter.
Why not put it elsewhere? Twitter is our place. And we like when content is natively published there. I have no interest in Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or Tumblr but I don't insist all the content in those places shouldn't be there. If all those people came to Twitter it would be a nightmare.
> It's not terrible
Low text density, atrocious typography, breaking of standard grammar, arbitrarily-spaced interruptions, no inline images (for mobile), limited external links and quotations, no headings, no custom formatting, random interruptions from other users.
I really can't fathom an argument that Twitter is in any way optimal for reading content of any length. Value added is exclusively in convenience and social factors.
Constraints can be a virtue. The barrier to entry for making a Tweet is very low, so there are a lot of people who do it. To get the features you've listed, you may need something like Wordpress, where the barrier is much higher. You also know everyone who reads your tweet will consume it in largely the same way for as long as Twitter exists.
All of these are priority and value judgements.
The author sees all that very differently from how you do.
Additionally, there are numerous others, myself included, who see it differently.
Frankly, I am quite happy to take it however an author feels they can share it. Often, that brings context of value to me as well.
Not all of us care about optimal when reading. It is just reading. No big.
Naysayers:
They have the compelling story and publish as they see fit.
You read, or not, because non optimal.
They still have the compelling stories, still publish as they see fit.
Audience either way, because compelling.
Thought experiment for you:
There are two radio stations. One airs compelling content at low quality. Usable, but not produced optimally.
The other demonstrates production excellence, but just is not all that compelling.
Which do you listen to? Which do most people listen to and why?
That is what is happening here.
You and gdulli (and soon to be me I'm sure) are being mass-downvoted by people who trend way older than the current people using social media, who grew up on blogs and written form, and thus hate everything new.
I personally prefer reading a blog too, but I realize that some people who have adaptive issues (the OP has severe ADHD and only writes effectively on Twitter, something basically no one criticizing him has looked for despite it being posted in these very comments) prefer this form, and some young people just hate blogging and prefer the tumblr/social media methods.
The content is being created, which is more than we can say for the majority of people bitching about how it is created.
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You're listing values or things that are specific to your client or your understanding of the platform. For example, I didn't see "random interruptions from other users" when I read that because I know the best way to consume that content isn't on my timeline.
And it's fine not to like Twitter or not be savvy with it or not be interested in becoming savvy with it. But when you see an absolute position that one's values are the only correct ones it should set off loud bullshit alarms in your head whether it's someone else making the argument or it's you. Especially if it's you, because you have more to gain by remembering your own humility than helping someone else find theirs.
Twitter's code and formatting very often causes chunks of threads to become detached, and it's not a simple matter of whether you're on your timeline.
And especially with replies, twitter has very strong opinions about what to show you and 'savvy' doesn't override that.
And defaults matter. Complaints about the standard client are valid complaints.
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> But when you see an absolute position that one's values are the only correct ones it should set off loud bullshit alarms in your head whether it's someone else making the argument or it's you.
This is literally everyone in these comments authoritatively deciding what the best way to consume content is. It's absurdly self-serving.
Imagine a feature length movie delivered as 300 webms.
Searching (2018) shows what can be accomplished for storytelling with hard constraints on the medium.
One could make another movie about all that transpired during the consumption of the original made this way.