I see these patterns on Linkedin too: a feed of the most algorithm-friendly posts that make me feel like I'm missing out on big things when I step away. A constant stream of the top posts from top creators demonstrates a sort of accelerated survivorship bias and drives career and life dysphoria.
There are a lot of people there that I'd like to talk to, but I always leave feeling worse than when I came.
Really liked this post. Concise enough, a fresh look at what we’ve all been thinking and examples of personal experience. Thanks!
One thing I that resonated especially is this:
“I have often wondered why a couple of prolific, excellent Twitter users I know don’t spend more time on longer-form writing that would be more enduring and complex than their Twitter stuff (and more rewarding, long-term, in material terms). There’s an answer I don’t like, but find increasingly plausible, which is that the mental state induced by Twitter is inimical to more subtle forms of expression.”
I have often thought this, and now that I’ve been more active on Twitter, also experienced it. Don’t really have a solution yet—although breaks sometimes work, I did a week last month and got a 7k piece done—at least not one that _really_ takes my mind of off Twitter.
i think it's just that when someone is on twitter, their brain is flooded with tons of mental programs that have "attachment" as their main content, and have short term as their main goal timeline and are often noisy and conflicting, and in any case these aren't conducive to the kind of open space that longer form writing requires.
The other day I got some sad news and I noticed among my first thoughts was how to parse and shape it into a thread. And that while I was thinking about that, I wasn’t connected to the actual feeling or experience or the aspects I cared about that made it sad, but instead more operating on a kind of third person view of them.
Makes sense that humans would spend time thinking about how to express and be understood by their peers, but something goes wrong when you scale that up to include hundreds, thousands+ of strangers and make anything in your life a potential object to share. + ever present as you point out
Really tips the scales in favor of conceptualizing experience in the terms of the social memeplex rather than on your own terms.
This is a great analysis!
I see these patterns on Linkedin too: a feed of the most algorithm-friendly posts that make me feel like I'm missing out on big things when I step away. A constant stream of the top posts from top creators demonstrates a sort of accelerated survivorship bias and drives career and life dysphoria.
There are a lot of people there that I'd like to talk to, but I always leave feeling worse than when I came.
Really liked this post. Concise enough, a fresh look at what we’ve all been thinking and examples of personal experience. Thanks!
One thing I that resonated especially is this:
“I have often wondered why a couple of prolific, excellent Twitter users I know don’t spend more time on longer-form writing that would be more enduring and complex than their Twitter stuff (and more rewarding, long-term, in material terms). There’s an answer I don’t like, but find increasingly plausible, which is that the mental state induced by Twitter is inimical to more subtle forms of expression.”
I have often thought this, and now that I’ve been more active on Twitter, also experienced it. Don’t really have a solution yet—although breaks sometimes work, I did a week last month and got a 7k piece done—at least not one that _really_ takes my mind of off Twitter.
i think it's just that when someone is on twitter, their brain is flooded with tons of mental programs that have "attachment" as their main content, and have short term as their main goal timeline and are often noisy and conflicting, and in any case these aren't conducive to the kind of open space that longer form writing requires.
The other day I got some sad news and I noticed among my first thoughts was how to parse and shape it into a thread. And that while I was thinking about that, I wasn’t connected to the actual feeling or experience or the aspects I cared about that made it sad, but instead more operating on a kind of third person view of them.
Makes sense that humans would spend time thinking about how to express and be understood by their peers, but something goes wrong when you scale that up to include hundreds, thousands+ of strangers and make anything in your life a potential object to share. + ever present as you point out
Really tips the scales in favor of conceptualizing experience in the terms of the social memeplex rather than on your own terms.
Great read, thanks for writing
great analysis. any tips on how to ween yourself off of the site? I've been hopelessly addicted for some time now.
also marijuana doesn't have good aesthetics. just saying. ; )