Tom Bubul .info
tombubul@gmail, @tombubul. Last modified .
2023 caveat: This is now a legacy page
Maybe more to say about twitter's sad ending at some other point, but wanted to update this page in the mean time to commemorate summer 2023's loss-cutting and migration to bsky. The legacy stuff below remains presented as-written.
If you need an invite to the new service, lmk.
Introduction
I read this Zach Mandeville essay in July 2018 (via Laurel) which includes a default [complaints-based] conversation abt twitter that concludes, "Maybe you're just using twitter wrong?"
It's a rhetorical jump-off that's part of a broader manifesto/proposal on how to do community online that suggests that it wd be better if social media were driven by software made for communities that use it, rather than by software made for corporations to use to leverage those communities for profit. While I recommend Zach's piece, and totally agree that the future it's proposing is worth working toward, I ALSO think it's worth thinking abt what we've got today - centralized corporate platforms - and how "we" might best use them. If not "them," at least twitter - I tend to feel that "we" best use the others by logging out of them.
As a language-based person it's been my experience of twitter that it's capable of the "old internet" thing of facilitating actual organic connections between people who should meet, or who should be aware of each other, but who otherwise might not be. In this context I think Zach's "maybe you're just using it wrong?" punchline is worth unpacking a bit further, as there really are so many ways to use twitter wrong. I've said things like "Twitter is really important" or "I've met a bunch of my current irl friends thru twitter" or "Twitter kinda sucks now but you should still check it out" so many times, but I realized that these endorsements are worthless without a little more detail. I also no longer feel that "stick around for 3-5 years and gradually figure it out" is healthy advice.
Why?
I've been using twitter pretty actively since 2012 and am constantly trying to explain what it is to me and how I use it, and got to the point where I felt like it might be useful to just have something in writing I could refer to. I have no idea to what extent my experience has to do with or can present as a generic and usable niche one, but I know for sure what it is and how to describe it, that it took a long time to figure out, and that it works for me.
The obvious proviso here is that ~95% of other longterm twitter users who read this will probably strongly disagree with some aspect of it. That's fine; part of what makes twitter so good AND so hard to use is how adaptable it is to everyone's individual, specific way of using it, and how there really are no rules. I'd read a post like this from any account I like.
My suggestions on how to use twitter (WIP)
Read tweets
Twitter's true power & utility comes thru reading & acknowledging tweets. The very best twitter users are readers, not posters. It doesn't matter if you post.
General guidelines, many exceptions exist =
- Read only the ppl you know directly, such as whoever recommended you join twitter. This might be only six people. If you're able to actually read all of the tweets on your TL in a casual sitting, once per day, you're doing great.
- If you want to add more, look at who your friends are talking to, or ask your favorite user who their favorite users are. Check out those TLs, and consider following some of them if you like them too. If you don't find anything, there's no rush.
- Follow actual humans only. Don't follow "brand" or "institution" accounts ever. If there is something specific you like about a brand or an institution, and can narrow that to a nameable individual, it's okay to follow them.
- Keep it ad-free. No brands, but also no brand-builders, no comedians, no high-key "funny" accounts, and no aggressive self-promoters of any kind. You're not on twitter to be sold things.
- Follow peers only. Generally you should only read people you might one day wish to talk to and who are also at least hypothetically willing to talk back. No "celebrities" and no "verified accounts" of people you either don't personally know, or aren't friends of friends, unless you're very specifically interested or invested in their cultural sphere. As a rule very few of these accounts are worth following anyway: they often violate the "actual humans only" rule by having managed accounts, the "ad-free" rule by aggressively self-promoting, they post too much, and the tweets aren't even good.
- Keep it Facebook-free. No "constant updates" accounts or accounts that "participate in the discourse."
- Keep it "news"-free. Read the news on a news website, not on twitter. The real news on twitter never comes from accounts you actually follow. There's zero reason to be following Rachel Maddow or the Guardian or whatever.
- Never add more than you can read.
Fav tweets
Favs are how people who read tweets communicate that they're reading them; they are not a measure of quality or really anything specific. If you're nodding or otherwise vibrating to something you're reading, fav it. You shouldn't fav em all, but you can fav an infinite amount of them, so don't be stingy. Favs say a lot of things but especially "I hear you" and "I see you."
Shoutout here to the Tony account, who for years has checked in every week or two and faved a bunch of stuff; I've been in irl convos with various sections of my friend group appreciating this faving practice in at least four different states. (He almost never posts himself.)
What you should tweet
Tweeting is not a direct address, it's posting into the wind, and again, you don't have to do it at all. As a person with an unknowable inner life fated to one day die, what would you like the wind to know? Anything that expresses your "true self" in some unalloyed way that you're comfortable sharing seems game to me.
Approaches to publicly vs. privately processing whatever thing and the receptivity of communities and friend groups to that processing on twitter varies extraordinarily, but it is my opinion that twitter is not good when used as a blog, and not good when used as a comments section. Posting too much stuff is bad no matter how good it is.
Two good things to think about are why Borna's here:
And also what this looks like long term:
For other positive uses of twitter consider the Ron Jon thread or the Bryan on twitter in 2020 appreciation post.
Replying to tweets
You can reply to whatever you want to. Your friends love hearing your voice, that's why they're your friends. While your access to strangers on twitter is much higher than it is irl, they're not your friends until they are, so most of the same irl courtesies apply.
Manage your timeline
Inevitably you find yourself thinking "Whoops I followed too much stuff, or some stuff I don't like and am not interested in, or don't get, or there's way too much from this one person just constantly going off."
Now you have to do twitter's required maintenance task: you have to unfollow (or mute, or turn off retweets from) some accounts.
- If someone is retweeting too much stuff you don't care about, it happens; just turn off their retweets. You do this by going to their profile page on twitter.com in the browser and clicking like so:
...not that I would ever turn off Jeff's retweets, this is just for example.
If someone you know is posting a high ratio of stuff you're not interested in, allow yourself to stop reading it. You can do this by using twitter's "unfollow" or "mute" functions. These functions have two differences.
1. With unfollow, if you follow again later, that sends a fresh follow notification. Also, if the person you're unfollowing is either maniacal or conditioned enough to care abt their "followers count," they might notice the number dropping, might figure out that it's you, and might get mad or confused or something.
2. If that seems stressful to you, you can avoid any potential social static related to the above by using mute. Mute does almost the exact same thing as unfollow: it removes someone's tweets from your timeline. Importantly, you can't know if or when someone has you muted. If you mute someone you'll still see replies your mutuals send to the muted party, and your mutes will stay on your follows list. Every so often I'll scroll thru there to see who I have muted and unmute some people. If I feel that I'm unlikely to unmute someone ever, sometimes I'll unfollow them.
The main feeling here is the shrugging emoji: "follower counts" and other "twitter numbers" don't matter at all, so the optics around them shouldn't matter either. At the highest possible level, my opinion is that nobody should ever even think about it - it's really, really, really, really not a big deal for anyone to stop reading anyone else.
If you decide to start tweeting yourself, a powerful blessing to offer your own account's readers is "Feel free to unfollow at any time."Tooling
I read twitter in the web browser at tweetdeck.twitter.com with an adblocker (ublock origin) installed. You don't see promoted/recommended tweets or ads this way. I feel that this is the best and only reasonable way to read twitter.
I also have the default "twitter" app on my smartphone so I can post stupid stuff as it comes to mind, but I'm not gonna recommend anyone "download the app." Even though I'm guilty of doing it, I feel that it's deeply cursed and unlucky to read twitter or look at any social media app on a phone, and so I encourage myself and all people to keep it desktop browser only.
When I read twitter
Generally I read twitter a few times during the day at my computer job; I scroll down, check out what I missed, then check back in a couple hours. Day twitter has the feeling of people who are online all day for work, posting abt daytime stuff, abt being at work, with daytime energy, etc.; it's a talk radio vibe.
I also like to read twitter at night on my really, really old macbook especially when I'm procrastinating at the studio. Night twitter is "the real twitter" - it has the chaos energy feeling of ghosts screaming into the void.
About retweets
Retweet is usually either "check out this thing" or "signal boost" but it's weirdly easy to do in annoying ways. Try to understand what "good retweeting" or "responsible retweeting" means to you before you go ham on it. It is a basic courtesy to fav what you retweet; considering them somehow mutually exclusive is weird.
About hashtags
Everyone knows about hashtags but new users are advised against bothering with them - they aren't really relevant to the kind of twitter usage I'm advocating for here (and suffice to say that their "#comedicpotential" is "#exhausted"). They have utility for tagging tweets for search, but this is a highly niche use case; see for example #jervynsclasp
Search
Search is the most special, powerful, and underappreciated aspect of Twitter. It's very important to understand that tweets stay around, and can be replied to or retweeted at a much later date. If you have a good memory for what you're reading, or an exploratory or playful approach to using search, or are aware of the archive as you tweet, this can create a lot of possibilities for longer-term interaction with the twitter service.
New users should attempt "from:username searchterm" where username is some user they like and searchterm is anything; try something broad like "I'm". If you come up with some novel-seeming pun, try searching the operative words first.
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