(2023jul15) Let\u2019s dive right in. I trust that you already know what Twitter is, you know what tweets are, I don\u2019t really want to do a 101 explainer of that stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are many different people playing many different games on Twitter, that\u2019s a lot of the fun of it. One of the things Twitter has going for it is that, in Internet terms, it\u2019s pretty old. It\u2019s been around since before \u201csocial media\u201d really became a concept. Lots of people be tweeting throwaway thoughts, whatever\u2019s on their mind. Some people take it a little more seriously. I like to think I do both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An important thing to note is that every tweet is framed and contextualized by the feed that it\u2019s being received in<\/strong>. Which is something that the creator doesn\u2019t really have a lot of control over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In theory, we\u2019re talking about bewilderingly infinite possibilities, since every person could have a completely different feed, by following a completely different set of other accounts. And, in a purely technical sense, sure, it\u2019s very unlikely that multiple people follow the exact same 236 people. But people are quite predictable, and convergent. We cluster. We want to watch what our friends are watching, we want to talk about what our friends are talking about. And so we have things like \u201cthe main character of the day\u201d, that \u201ceveryone is talking about\u201d. At the time of writing, the most recent discernable main character event was Jonah Hill\u2019s texts to his ex, and discourse around boundaries and abusive\/controlling behavior. I don\u2019t want to get into that, I just want to make a quick note to point out the convergent nature of a lot of Twitter. People see an opportunity to talk about what other people are talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Could make a separate point here about the power and value of focusing on what you want to see more of. There is a strength to knowing what your talking points are, knowing what sort of discourse you want to participate in, how you want to contribute, who you want to hear from. \u201cTweet for the audience you want, not the audience you have,\u201d was a bit of advice that I gave myself a few years ago, that I think has really paid off in a myriad of ways, and helped me stave off of the worst of the problem of Audience Capture<\/a>. As with many things, it turns out Nietzsche got here first<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, this isn\u2019t really what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the grammar of tweets. what do I mean by that?? Well. I\u2019ve tweeted a lot, right. Over 230,000 tweets over the years. A recurring joke amongst my friends is \u201cthere\u2019s always a Visa tweet\u201d, because I\u2019ve covered so much ground thinking out loud about basically everything. So a question worth asking and answering is, why bother writing essays, if you\u2019ve already tweeted about everything?1<\/a> And the answer is\u2026 while I might have tweeted about<\/em> nearly everything, those tweets aren\u2019t necessarily enough to capture everything I want to say. And here I could do some dramatic, \u201creach to the heavens\u201d, \u201cstrive for the company of immortals\u201d type brushstrokes \u2013 how can a finite being ever speak of the infinity of experience \u2013 well, we allude to it with poetry! \u2013 but that\u2019s not what I want to talk about. Having framed a spectrum from \u201cthrowaway shitpost tweet lol\u201d to \u201cthe celestial and infinite awesomeness of The Eternal Word of God\u201d, I want to come back to earth and measure the distance from \u201cearnest thread\u201d to \u201cearnest essay\u201d. Yessss this is the thing I was looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n 2023feb17<\/p>\n\n\n\n