When “microblogging” services (as we used to call them) were starting to take off, I wanted the European alternative Jaiku to win not Twitter. It was with some reluctance that I realised Jaiku wasn’t going anywhere and that only left Twitter.
“As a sociologist I was convinced microblogging had the power to change society”
Jyri Engeström, co-founder of Jaiku
Even in the early days, Twitter had a “bro” culture, fronted by popular bloggers like Biz Stone. I much preferred the origin story for Jaiku where it was an efficient way to message your friends about things you liked rather than signal your status.
Constraints and innovation
Much has already been said of the way in which the 144 character limit of twitter was a useful constraint. If you cared about crafting the message you wanted to post, getting the maximum meaning from a fixed amount of letters was a lot of fun and encouraged the discipline of editing what you wrote. There were micro thrills to be had in completing your message and seeing the character count hit zero.
The story goes that hashtags were an innovation that resulted from twitter. With no way to group post by topic or theme, the use of a hash “#” following by an agreed upon keyword arguably resulted in one of the most simplest yet powerful innovations the internet has produced in terms of it’s cultural impact.
Interest graph
I remember on reading early on about how twitter was built on the “interest graph” as opposed to the “social graph” popularised by facebook. A place where you could find and follow whatever you are interested in and through that, the people who shared those interests whether they were known to you personally or not. For a time, this was a fantastic experience, like taking part in something that was simultaneously public yet private, your own little corner of the crowded square.
It was perhaps inevitable that the magic wouldn’t last but that doesn’t stop you wanting to recapture the feeling that once was. In my experience, there has never been an alternative that matches up although new publishing platforms like Substack show promise, albeit with the proviso that a walled garden must now exist to safeguard the experience (and make money - something that twitter never really managed).
Subconscious backup
John Maeda tweeted something interesting one time, that he considered twitter (and perhaps microblogging in general) as a way of backing up his subsconscious. This was a romantic view of the technology and culture of the moment which resonated with me at the time. With the rise of celebrities on twitter, things took a Freudian turn and now more like a service for livestreaming the id, the ego and the superegos.
Anything worth tweeting about is probably worth writing about. I can’t remember where I first heard this phrase but as I fell out of love with twitter this came to dominate my thoughts. How much time had I wasted on the easy dopamine hit of twitter posts as oppossed to longer form pieces that might have helped me get better at writing? It was, and still is, too easy for me to not sit down and type a few paragraphs without either getting bored or simply thinking it’s all a load of crap so why bother.
Narcisissm as a service
Celebs, blue ticks and keyboard warriors now dominate the discourse and with increasing speed, the delicate webs of interest that were once curated by so many optimists have been swept aside. The ordinary folks expressing their everyday thoughts have been replaced by a tide of cluster B personalities looking to recruit followers amongst the chronically online. It’s only fitting that Elon should be in charge now.
There are alternatives to twitter of course but I won’t be switching. For me, the time has been and gone and there is little point in hoping to resurrect a bygone vibe with a smaller group of people you scarcely know on platforms you can’t trust with shittier experiences. Nope. I’m just going to let it wind down naturally and take my attention elsewhere.