Is anybody else still regularly checking Twitter? It used to be such a big part of my day, and my work life, but I can barely bring myself to look at it any more. Partly I think it's because a lot of the people I used to follow closely just aren't there. They've taken themselves off to Mastodon’s confusing Federation of mirror mazes, or they’re waiting for an invoice to Bluesky. Partly, too, it’s a firehose of crazy. Yes, yes, it always was, but it was funny and quirky and engaging with it.
Now it just seems nasty.
I guess I should send Elon a thank you note. I’ve wasted a lot of time on the bird site. But that really isn't a problem any more. Having made the effort to be a little more active here at the Burger, I'm feeling confident about just shutting down my Twitter and maybe even my Facebook accounts.
(Weirdly enough, although I’ve always pretty much hated Facebook, in the last year or so, it's become useful to me because there is one particular group that I like to check in with over there. It's just a weird little community of people who have built their own home gyms. Honestly, it's the only reason I even open that accursed Hellsite any more.)
So, anyway, just wondering if it’s just me or if everyone else is over it too.
It's a bit of a shame. I tried mastodon but it didnt really grab me. I have IG for a photo blog and started a vero one because IG was getting on my nerves but its mellowed a bit lately. Vero was very clunky to use and i find not very community focused - chat in that thing is horrendous. You get enough chats for one pat on the back and thats it - discourse is impossible. FB as well is just for those specialist groups like community groups etc. What were we saying about a moment in time in a previous post?
I have an IG account but I rarely go there. I used to follow pro photographers and space agencies exclusively, but about year my feed filled up with influencer bullshit anyway.
Being a fan of F1 and cycling, but not a fan of getting up in the middle of the night and paying a subscription to watch them, Twitter is a good place to follow. I can either check on it if I wake up or catch up on all the blow by blow and post race gossip in the morning.
Other than that, I just kind of drift over the rest of the stuff unless something catches my eye.
My feed still seems ok, but I probably don't have a sufficient following to attract the nastier elements. I set up a Spoutible account when that was established but so far it's mostly American focused and, being a political tragic, focused on the bin fire that is US politics so far, so I find myself drifting back to Twitter again and again. Plus I could never give up Twitter while Damo and I can share tweets and snark at everyone in our DMs. And Cat and Dog Twitter are still pure and adorable as heck.
I do find it ironic that people are looking at Bluesky as the answer to all their problems. If a Twitter rival set up by the guy that made Twitter an inconsistent arbiter of free speech and then facilitated its sale to Space Karen is the answer, I'm not sure I want to know what the question is.
My hope as a Twitter tragic is that it will somehow outlast Space Karen's attention span.
I agree with you about the weird love for Bluesky app. I figure its largely in response to how much Elon sucks that means folk are willing to put up with Twitter 2.0 in comparison.
Yeah, Spoutible seems to have emerged in response to minorities and other groups seeking a space where they weren't going to cop the kind of shit they copped on Twitter, and the mainstream yearning for Twitter 2.0 rather than embracing Spoutible is a bit of a "huh?" moment.
Facebook has just gone all advertising. Scam advertising, wishful thinking advertising, waste your money advertising your terrible art which looks like a scam , but is actually a scam from Facebook selling advertising for wishful thinking. Twitter just made me sad, the posts from people making endless headline assumptions about their assumptions , without questioning or interrogating those assumptions before posting. A drug fuelled Jordan Peterson acting like he's jesus , even after saying you can't be jesus was reasonably entertaining except it ended up detracting from the good points he made about rubbish degrees and idiotic sceptical French philosophy.
Mastodon is working fine for me - I chose a site more or less at random and it's been ok so far. I don't notice the maze of federated sites because it all just works - or it doesn't - and I see what I see and that's enough. Hardest part has been tracking down all the interesting follows on twitter and finding them again on Mastodon.
I still browse twitter (after running out of Mastodon posts to read). Signal to noise is definitely much worse than it was. My feed was already fairly well curated, mostly following sane-ish people, so not too much white supremacist bs etc, even now. But I have to wade through a lot of people saying the exact same thing much more than I used to, so it's becoming much less worth the time invested.
I was a lurker for #auspol, never joined though. Then it got crazy nasty, then it refused access to non-twitterers. Oh well, what the hell, Musk just saved me from the timesuck.
Exactly, and I kept checking in on it, more fool me. A week or two back the site refused access and made the decision easy for me.
It was the only place to get info and commentary on the #robodebt royal commission, too. For some reason the mainstream media pretty much didn't touch that. I mean, what could possibly be the public interest in political and public service abuse of vulnerable citizens?
Rick Morton was live blogging the RC on The Saturday Paper website, but yeah, you hardly heard a peep otherwise outside of Twitter. The MSM must still be traumatised by Scumwad etc.
Maybe it will die out but I doubt it. Not many leaving who claimed they would. Elon did a great thing turning the files over to Tailibi and Shellenberger and Bari Weiss. Lots of great stuff on substack from all of them. Social media is mostly crap anyway. Facebook too lest we forget the genesis of that site. They would all be better off opening their algorithms up like Elon did but that’s not going to happen. Substack notes seems decent so far. We’ll see
It's a bit of a shame. I tried mastodon but it didnt really grab me. I have IG for a photo blog and started a vero one because IG was getting on my nerves but its mellowed a bit lately. Vero was very clunky to use and i find not very community focused - chat in that thing is horrendous. You get enough chats for one pat on the back and thats it - discourse is impossible. FB as well is just for those specialist groups like community groups etc. What were we saying about a moment in time in a previous post?
I have an IG account but I rarely go there. I used to follow pro photographers and space agencies exclusively, but about year my feed filled up with influencer bullshit anyway.
Being a fan of F1 and cycling, but not a fan of getting up in the middle of the night and paying a subscription to watch them, Twitter is a good place to follow. I can either check on it if I wake up or catch up on all the blow by blow and post race gossip in the morning.
Other than that, I just kind of drift over the rest of the stuff unless something catches my eye.
Yeah, I'm over it, too. Deleted.
My feed still seems ok, but I probably don't have a sufficient following to attract the nastier elements. I set up a Spoutible account when that was established but so far it's mostly American focused and, being a political tragic, focused on the bin fire that is US politics so far, so I find myself drifting back to Twitter again and again. Plus I could never give up Twitter while Damo and I can share tweets and snark at everyone in our DMs. And Cat and Dog Twitter are still pure and adorable as heck.
I do find it ironic that people are looking at Bluesky as the answer to all their problems. If a Twitter rival set up by the guy that made Twitter an inconsistent arbiter of free speech and then facilitated its sale to Space Karen is the answer, I'm not sure I want to know what the question is.
My hope as a Twitter tragic is that it will somehow outlast Space Karen's attention span.
I'm giving you a like purely for the use of Space Karen. It's excellent.
Merci! Sadly I didn't coin it, just appropriated it 😂
I agree with you about the weird love for Bluesky app. I figure its largely in response to how much Elon sucks that means folk are willing to put up with Twitter 2.0 in comparison.
Yeah, Spoutible seems to have emerged in response to minorities and other groups seeking a space where they weren't going to cop the kind of shit they copped on Twitter, and the mainstream yearning for Twitter 2.0 rather than embracing Spoutible is a bit of a "huh?" moment.
Facebook has just gone all advertising. Scam advertising, wishful thinking advertising, waste your money advertising your terrible art which looks like a scam , but is actually a scam from Facebook selling advertising for wishful thinking. Twitter just made me sad, the posts from people making endless headline assumptions about their assumptions , without questioning or interrogating those assumptions before posting. A drug fuelled Jordan Peterson acting like he's jesus , even after saying you can't be jesus was reasonably entertaining except it ended up detracting from the good points he made about rubbish degrees and idiotic sceptical French philosophy.
Don't use either, and don't feel I'm missing anything
Still on twitter, still check it. Sort of like an RSS, I use one of those as well - Old Reader. I agree its has gotten worse since Elon took over.
Mastodon is working fine for me - I chose a site more or less at random and it's been ok so far. I don't notice the maze of federated sites because it all just works - or it doesn't - and I see what I see and that's enough. Hardest part has been tracking down all the interesting follows on twitter and finding them again on Mastodon.
I still browse twitter (after running out of Mastodon posts to read). Signal to noise is definitely much worse than it was. My feed was already fairly well curated, mostly following sane-ish people, so not too much white supremacist bs etc, even now. But I have to wade through a lot of people saying the exact same thing much more than I used to, so it's becoming much less worth the time invested.
I never bothered with it, so am feeling smug. Sadly, I have to use Fbook for work.
I was a lurker for #auspol, never joined though. Then it got crazy nasty, then it refused access to non-twitterers. Oh well, what the hell, Musk just saved me from the timesuck.
#Auspol went from interesting to utterly toxic in about five days, as I recall.
Exactly, and I kept checking in on it, more fool me. A week or two back the site refused access and made the decision easy for me.
It was the only place to get info and commentary on the #robodebt royal commission, too. For some reason the mainstream media pretty much didn't touch that. I mean, what could possibly be the public interest in political and public service abuse of vulnerable citizens?
Rick Morton was live blogging the RC on The Saturday Paper website, but yeah, you hardly heard a peep otherwise outside of Twitter. The MSM must still be traumatised by Scumwad etc.
That's what he was doing on the bird-site too.
Maybe it will die out but I doubt it. Not many leaving who claimed they would. Elon did a great thing turning the files over to Tailibi and Shellenberger and Bari Weiss. Lots of great stuff on substack from all of them. Social media is mostly crap anyway. Facebook too lest we forget the genesis of that site. They would all be better off opening their algorithms up like Elon did but that’s not going to happen. Substack notes seems decent so far. We’ll see
Haha. We'll agree to disagree about Elon. I was, and remain an admirer of his vision for hi tech. But lately I wouldn't trust him to feed my dogs.
Deal. I wouldn’t trust any of the billionaire owners of social media and media in general to feed my dog either.