This post is a couple of weeks late- life intervened. But for those of you following me on twitter, you might have noticed that postings from me have been sparse of late (and by “sparse”, I mean “non-existent”). This is because I’ve quit twitter. I’ve stopped posting and stopped reading.
I can not explain on twitter why I quit twitter. Which is why I quit twitter. Confused? That’s exactly my point.
I first got “on the net” (usenet, in this case) back in 1986- but even before then I had been getting on to local BBS’s and engaging in online conversations. And one thing I noticed was that online conversations were of a distinctly different character than face to face conversations. Change the format and you change the structure of the conversation. Even the most miserly BBS generally allowed several thousand characters to be put in a message- which allowed fairly intricate and complicated arguments to be developed. And even more importantly, they allowed these arguments to be developed atomically- posting a message was an atomic operation. Participants in these arguments could develop entire rhetorical structures within the course of a post, without having to deal with shouted objections or distractions.
And this change is not just a stylistic change- it’s not just a chance to wax bombastic without interruption- it has a real and important change in the range of dialog. As many ideas- basically, all those ideas not already accepted by the audience- need greater justification. For example, if I were to opine that, say, Saddam Hussein was a terrorist, I probably wouldn’t need much in the way of justification of that statement. But if I were to opine that, say, George W. Bush or Barrak Obama were terrorists, now I need the ability to justify that opinion, and not just be dismissed as a nut case. I need room- I need words- to explain that the definition of a “terrorist” is not just “scary brown person”, but is instead someone who uses terror- violence and the threat of violence- in order to attempt to make political changes. And that both Bush and Obama have used violence and the threat of violence to attempt to make political changes- in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and many other places. Arguably even here in the US.
On BBSs, mail lists, usenet groups, and blogs I have the space to make this sort of argument. As a single presentation, a single post, uninterrupted. Especially with blogs, I can link to supporting evidence (or contrdicting evidence, annotated with explanations). I can, if I so desire, spend pages of text spelling out the argument and exploring the ramifications. You can respond in kind, with an equally long and involved rebuttal.
In most other debate structures, I don’t have the time to make the argument before being shouted down. All I can manage to get out is the bumper sticker statement- “Bush was a terrorist”. This convinces precisely no one- if you already agree with the sentiment, then I haven’t changed your mind, but if you disagree with the sentiment, then I’ve given you no reason not to consider me a crank, if not a loon. There is a reason “alternate” politics, like liberalism or libertarianism, thrive on the internet. On the internet it is possible to mount a defense of ideas that are not already conventional wisdom.
Indeed, “conventional wisdom” comes across as shallow and contrived. Do you have arguments to support your opinions, or just bumper sticker slogans? The interesting people in the debate are the ones offering (more or less) contrarian opinions. Telling me Saddam Hussein was a terrorist doesn’t tell me anything interesting, anything I didn’t already know.
The nearest historical analog for this “long” form of debate has to be the pamphleteers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Ben Franklin and Tom Paine and that crowd were, in a very real sense, the bloggers of their day. They too had the length and atomicity necessary to develop arguments that challenged the conventional, and thus changed, the poltical thought of their day. If the internet is to be anything more than a geek’s toy, then this is how it will work. By giving those of us with unconventional ideas and opinions the room to explain and defend those ideas, and to have the opportunity to convince others to change their minds, and maybe change ours as well.
Which brings me back to twitter. What attracted me initially to Twitter was the allure of these conversations (say better: exchanges) that were (supposedly) going on there. But after participating for a while, I discovered that Twitter is manifestly incapable of supporting the sorts of conversations I am interested in participating in. Twitter, as everyone knows, limits your tweets to 140 characters long- the length of a sentence, and not an overly long one at that (this sentence alone is weighing in at 171 characters and counting). What is possible to communicate in this excessively short amount of space? One possibility is trivia- the classic “what I had for breakfast” tweets. I barely care about what I had for breakfast, why should I care about what you had for breakfast? The other possibility is for bumper sticker opinions.
But stating opinions on twitter is hardly more useful (other than the pure egotistical thrill) than tweeting what you had for lunch, because twitter’s structure makes it impossible to engage in any sort of meaningful conversation. I mean, consider what your options are if someone posts an opinion you strongly disagree with on twitter. You can respond “that’s not true” or some variant thereof, but now all you’re doing is the classic arguments of six year olds- “is not!” “is too!” is not! is not! is not!”- which often degenerates into the other popular argument form, trading insults. Also, it loses what little effectiveness is had as you advance educationally, like entering grade school.
You could try and do a “tweet storm”, splitting a single response up amongst multiple different tweets- but even there, you are strictly limited in the length of your response- six, even eight tweet responses to a single tweet is both clunky and considered in bad form. And multiple tweets are not atomic- I had numerous occassions where people responded to part of my argument prematurely (and thus incorrectly) simply because I hadn’t gotten to that part yet. “You haven’t considered this aspect yet!” Yes, I have, I just haven’t gotten to it yet. I’ve spent a large hunk of the morning composing this blog post (including an hour break to go get breakfast- ham, egg, and cheese sandwich over at the Clark St. Restaurant, if you’re interested. Were you?), but you will see it as a single piece, which makes it possible for you to follow the logic. Spread this same argument over a large number of tweets, over the course of the morning, interspersed randomly with tweets from different discussions and it disolves into incoherence. Anyone who has tried following multiple disjoint discussions at the same time (say, at a party), knows exactly what I’m talking about.
Or, you could condensce the idea down into a single Zen like statement. But- except in cases where the argument you are making is trivial to begin with- this is unlikely to be any more effective than just going “that’s not true!” Information theory says that the more information that is in a signal, the harder it is to decode that signal- and the easier it is to mistake that signal for noise. Consider the statement I started this very blog with: that the reason I’m quitting twitter is that I can not explain, on twitter, why I’m quitting twitter. And that if this confuses you, that’s exactly my point. I’ve just spent over 1,300 words unpacking that sentence (including, I’ll admit, introducing a fair amount of information-free redundancy) into something much easier for people to decode. That sentence is the core point of this entire blog post. But when I just came out and say it, without the unpacking and explanation, the most likely response people have is “what the fuck?” I might as well have said “I am quitting twitter because colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
If you enjoy twitter, enjoy. But I have no desire to return. I have better things to do with my time. If all you want is validation and support for your opinions, I’m not who you want to be talking to. Even if I agree with you, I’ll play devil’s advocate and challenge your position. If you want to debate me, I’m open to it. But for the debate to not be pointless, that means it has to be held somewhere where ideas can be explored and complex arguments can be presented. In email, in blog posts, in comments, somewhere where there is room. I refuse to be limited in my debate to bumper sticker slogans and does not/does to arguments.
And that is why I am no longer on twitter.
12 Comments
conversations on twitter are pretty limited. debate, i would agree, is pretty much impossible. if that’s what you want to do there, you won’t find it very useful.
but you may want to consider that twitter was never really intended for that, and ask whether it may actually be useful for other purposes.
Twitter is an excellent means for self-promotion. And that’s about it.
Hey, that’s short enough to fit in a tweet!
Thanks. That’s another good reason to quit twitter.
New rule: all comments disagreeing with this post must be <= 140 chars. :-}
Ironically, I’ve quit (or at least gone on hiatus) from Twitter for basically an opposite reason: I find the information stream too interesting. The value I found in Twitter, though, is as a kind of meta-conversation: it provided a jumping-off point for learning about interesting stuff other people were doing. In this sense, it’s like an RSS feed, but 1) I don’t have to feel bad about not keeping up with it, and 2) it’s easier to skim.
It was also a nice outlet for minor vents (like my last post) which weren’t worth fleshing out into blog posts but which I felt like sharing with whoever cared to listen.
Sometimes those started to blossom into longer conversation, but the format of Twitter itself does seem to fight against it. A case in point is The Self-Destructive Side of Open Source Software: in order to actually argue what I was saying, I needed to shift to a different kind of media.
The genius of Twitter—and why it’s so addicting to me—is because it’s a social slot machine: every time I checked the page, there was a variety of new comments, links to articles, funny quips, etc. This provided positive reinforcement for checking it—not every time, but often enough that it kept me coming back somewhat obsessively (variable-ratio positive reinforcement FTW!). And after a particularly good payout (an interesting article link, a smidgin of an interesting conversation, a response from someone I admired *cough@wilwcough*), I’d come back even more regularly.
Aside from the addictive quality, the only other thing it was particularly good for was for when I was watching sporting events, major political speeches, or other mass-media events. That provided a kind of real-time connection to people which I wouldn’t have had if I was sitting there watching it alone. Of course, it’s kind of pathetic to get that going via Twitter when I could be hanging out with friends and having better (and more fun/rewarding/engaging) conversations. It took me a while to realize that, though. And if nobody else is around, Twitter might still work as a substitute.
I have to say having read the article that I don’t really agree with your argument, in one sense you are absolutely correct you cannot form an indepth argument in the space of a single tweet without the risk of background noise appearing between tweets. However, I don’t think your followers would have appreciated this type of multi-tweet approach anyhow! I would have suggested to use your example of George Bush = Terrorist, that the best way for you to have used twitter was as a linking tool to another platform i.e a blog where you can opine to your hearts delight. Linking out using a phrase like ‘Is George Bush A Terrorist?’ in your tweet would make your readers aware there is a discussion to be had, and once they follow your link, they are then presented with the full strength of your argument and ideally a comments section, like this one! Voila, a concise way to open up your discussion to more people without haveing to worry about the character limit! Twitter wasn’t designed to debate, it was built to inform.
And by “inform”, you mean “spew pithy comments, possibly with links”.
Note that an RSS—>Twitter application is the extent of Twitter’s value as laid out in that comment.
Maybe it’s an opportunity to try other medias like FB and Google Buzz.
Twitter’s anal simplicity and limitations always annoyed me too.
For me, Twitter’s main value lies in sharing hyperlinks, getting people to read what they might not otherwise see. Of course, ‘getting’ is too strong of a word here, but we could probably all agree that people remain uninformed about the world, despite the so-called Information Revolution.
As for conversation, indeed, it really can’t be held on Twitter. But think back to Berners-Lee and the vision for sharing documents. I think Twitter helps to further this.
@Doug: It’s worth mentioning some URLs are longer than 140 chars.
@Brian: You do have a point, but I actually have found some of my most potent arguments were only a few words long — however, I’m noticing that you are, to put it gently, a verbose writer… and thus I think your decision to quit Twitter is quite well founded.
Me? Never used it; not even sure I’ve ever visited the homepage.
Heh. I resemble that remark. Seeing as I once took six pages to say “me too”.
That said, it’s exceeding rare that I’ve seen a short effective argument, unless the effect intended was to shut down debate. Witty insults fit into 140 characters or less as a rule. Actually changing people’s minds (mine or others) is generally more involved.
I just came to exactly the same conclusion. Although it wasn’t purely because of the lack of expressive opportunity – the conversational structure and sheer unremitting volume of distraction finally did for me. Most social media I find to have added to my life – Twitter took part of it away
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