Tuesday, February 24, 2015

The Unbearable Lightness of Tweeting

The Unbearable Lightness of Tweeting, article.
[Note: the article does *not* end with the graphics.]

I have earlier (to my shame, more than once. I'd like to be more positive, but sometimes it's hard) kvetched about Twitter. It's a small wonder I can't find anything interesting on it, who can be interesting in 140 characters?

But I thought at least it might be a good platform to share links, both for me and for others. A portal medium, leading to substantial stuff, relatively.

But no, it turns out that even at best, only about 1% of twitter readers who interact with a tweet, click through to a link! That is so depressing. It means Twitter actually *is* useless as a medium, except for such superficial use as sharing 140-character jokes or making 140-character arguments.

I, like many others, have found our attention span horribly diminished in the digital age. That many, many others are far, far ahead in this slow mental suicide might be a solace, but sadly it does not feel like it.

2 comments:

Ken said...

Lots of people are spending their life with a lot of low-level noise, which they don't have time or reason to deal with in detail.

An example is Facebook. I Friend someone who I went to school with. They then comment on their friends photo of their friends baby. I don't need to know so I ignore. Probably easier if I didn't see it in the first place. people with 100 Friends must be overwhelmed with pointless information

Anonymous said...

You don't get overwhelmed because Facebook's algorithms decide who and what is important, and which posts it thinks you should see.