Sunday Vid Script: "Twitter? More Like Shitter" (Patreon)

Let's talk about Twitter.

Twitter dot com is a web page for scoundrels. The web site is a slaughterhouse for braincells, both perpetrated by staff and users, and the experience of using it can only be described as a kafkaesque nightmare paradox. You might think I'm being funny but by the end of this film you'll see Twitter for the thinly veiled hellscape it truly is.

Like many epic tales, Twitter's begins long ago, in the ancient times of 2006. Ancient denizens of that bygone era such as myself will remember 2006 as a cradle of web development that existed post 9/11 but pre great recession. We as americans were coming to terms with the fact that the internet was the next big thing, and we were coming to terms the only way we knew how. By profiteering and cornering the new market.

The top dog in this post 9/11 pre recession cradle I'll hereby refer to as the "cradle of filth" was Facebook, inhereting the legacy of personal web sites like Myspace and Friendster, where users could build internet monuments to themselves while interacting with their loose social group.

Twitter, on the other hand was a little different. While it did have some of the same appeal of these social websites, Twitter marketed itself as a blogging website, with its limited character count as the main draw.

Back in the 2000s, the idea of Twitter was, in a word, quaint. Blogging websites already existed as did social media platforms, and the only selling point was Twitter's limited character count and the tagging system, both of which made it a pale imitation of Tumblr and Facebook alike. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey described the initial idea as follows:

"...we came across the word 'twitter', and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was."

Most people seemed to regard it as a novelty. A fad. But not all novelties are fads. Some novelties persist.

This video isn't about the rise of Twitter as a platform, oh no. There's already a Wikipedia article about that. This is all just to demonstrate the conceit of Twitter as a web site and company. As Jack said- Inconsequential information. Unfortunately that's not how things stayed.

Part 1: Shitter

It's difficult to succinctly describe why Twitter is such abject dog feces, so instead of trying to capture it in some cheap, quick truism like most of the posts on the site do, I'm going to just say it and hope the next few minutes of the video can prove the myriad reasons why I think so.

In 2021, interacting on Twitter is similar  to how things were back in the day. For starters, there's still a character limit and the hashtags, but there are also new features, like photos and videos. On top of this, Twitter remains the only prominent social media platform other than Reddit to allow NSFW content after the great tumblr titty exodus of 2018.

Twitter also has the featured news tab, which posts updates on current events and news, allowing people to plug into whatever neoliberal horseshit that Twitter wants you to see. The news tab is driven half by news sites and half by user interaction, which means that half of stories are going to be about Joe Biden and how his brain is NOT decomposing in his skull and the other half is going to be either Dream stans or Kpop fans congratulating their idols for sitting down in chairs and other such mundane activities.

These features alone, however, don't make Twitter bad. Maybe you like Kpop. Maybe you like Minecraft youtubers. Maybe you are neoliberal trash garbage. If you like this stuff for some reason, then Twitter sucks for different reasons.

First of all, let's talk about the timeline. The timeline is where most Twitter denizens are going to spend a majority of their time on the platform. There are two configurations you can make your timeline be, Top Tweets or Latest Tweets. Most sane people would choose Latest Tweets, but for some ungodly reason, just like Facebook and Youtube, Twitter doesn't want you to see things in a simple sequence. The other option, the default option, is "top tweets." What the fuck a "top" tweet is is beyond me. From my best guess, it's sort of like the most recent tweets, but weighted by how many likes and shares and replies they've gotten. This sounds good, but at the end of the day, the calculus they use to decide "top" tweets is so inscrutable as to be useless. Top tweets bury the smaller accounts and the sequential view covers anything good with the people who tweet the most. It's the worst of both worlds.

Frankly, we could call it a day right here. Twitter is bad on its face at getting content that you might like to see to your eyeballs. There's a halfway decent feature in the "who to follow" tab, but even then I'm just going to follow more people whos posts I'm never going to see.

Compare this to Tumblr. I'm following only about 100 people on Tumblr and it's pretty consistent that I'm going to see SOMETHING there that catches my interest. Twitter, on the other hand, where I'm following nearly double that, takes ages to get anything that I'm remotely interested in.

But let's say you do find a tweet that you like. Let's click on it and see what happens.

Twitter isn't very forthcoming about this, but there are two "types" of tweets that have very different levels of engagement. First, there are the run of the mill posts, then there are the replies. Replies are by nature less prioritized and rarely show up in the timeline at all. Again- I don't know how twitter works on the back end but it's rare that I see replies at all when normally scrolling. Not to mention, the more replies you have, the further they're buried INSIDE of the tweet thread. If there are more than one or two replies in a thread, they're usually hidden behind a "read more." This is also annoying. Twiter arbitrarily hiding things will become a theme.

There's also a feature called the "Quote Retweet" which is like a reply, but instead of the reply being included in the thread, it's posted as a status with the main tweet embedded inside it.

A much more elegant system is the humble Tumblr reblog, from which things can be added and reposted at will, all posted to the timeline. Or, like Facebook and Youtube, replies are relegated to comments sections and aren't given a full post status of their own.

This is all to say that Twitter is just... Annoying to navigate. You rarely see posts you're interested in and when you do, they're a jumbled mess of replies and comments.

But besides the general post-flow, there's something much more fundemental at play.

Part 2: Characters and Characters

There's also the issue of the character limit. I know this is like, the central conceit of the site, but the character limit sucks. Everything beyond that is just so much annoying extraneous bullshit. Twitter is built around this, and it sucks, like it's a building built on shitty soft mud. It's a stupid idea. People say less is more or that necessity is the mother of invention, but even then, 280 characters is seriously nothing. If you want an artform with linguistic limits write a fucking haiku.

As twitter has aged, more and more prominent figures have accessed the platform, and increasingly, the interactions between people on the platform have become more and more toxic. This isn't just a case of being personally miserable on the website, but it's fuelled actual discontent.

On any platform, there are going to be fuckhead idiots saying fuckhead idiot things, and Twitter doesn't have more or less fuckhead idiots than any other place, but on Twitter, these fuckhead idiots can scream the loudest. Reactionary politics thrives in an environment where there's little nuance, and I can't think of a web site less conduscive to nuance than Twitter, where you only have 280 characters to refute the man who says Jews caused 9/11.

People can just scream whatever they want, basically without fear of refutation. One of the US presidents did it for four years.

I sometimes check in on web sites like Reddit and 4chan where reactionary sentiments are more common, and frankly, Twitter is a much better environment for these people. On 4chan and Reddit, the forum is open to anyone, and more often than not, these reactionary spaces are invaded by trolls clowning on them for being such dipshits. Whenever you go on /pol/ there are always a few threads saying things like "you virgins are pathetic, how can you live with yourselves" and whenever you go on Reddit, there are people posting copypastas on people's dumbass takes.

On Twitter, there are robust systems in place to keep these same people inside their echo chambers. On Twitter you can block people. On Twitter you need only interact with the people you want, yet your sentiments are still publically available. You can say anything you want, block the naysayers, and come out looking squeaky clean.

Twitter did ban Donald Trump near the end of his presidency, but that was far little, far too late. The damage had been done. He told a bunch of people to storm the capitol and they did. They did the shittiest job imaginable, but they did.

Part 3: So What?

Ultimately, Twitter is here to stay. The genie is out of the bottle. For the forseeable future, it's going to be the largest platform to promote things and network. It pretty much sucks ass.

There's nothing we can do. It's depressing, but it's true. Still, it's not like you can get banned for saying Twitter is a shithole, and it's not like you have to spend a shitload of time there.

In a little while, I'm going to make a follow up video to this one on how to actually survive on Twitter as a creative, but for now, all we can do is what we always do under capitalism: Exist in a perpetual state of mild yet profound discontentment until we organize a revolt.

In Minecraft.

Special thanks to this month's Patrons: Sebastian Hagert, Zipperozic, Zach Vincent, KaleidoscopeMediator, Luna Skywalker Tucker, and Jojro.

Today's anti-sponsor is Honey. I've seen the Honey add-on to Chrome being passed around, and I used it for a week. Most apps of this type farm data, so I was suspicious, but upon doing some research, the only data it farms is stuff to give you targeted ads, which isn't that bad, but still kind of shitty. As for how it actually works, it's pretty much garbage. I didn't save a penny after making several online purchases including Amazon, some custom tee websites, and Grubhub. It's going to sit on your computer and bother you. It's less about saving you money and more about keeping your browsing history to pass onto ad firms. It's not DANGEROUS but it's worthless.

See you next time.