I have been a member of Twitter for the last 10 years. I joined in the height of what I term the “Twitter fad”. Everyone one was joining, so I did too. I have never found much use for the platform, and never saw value in it’s format. It is easy to use and understand, but its limited content abilities made it unappealing to me. It feels like a replication of what can be done on all the other platforms with less benefits.
If you look at my current Twitter feed, you will see mostly links to poetry posts from my website http://poeticcomputer.com. I don’t have many followers and follow very few persons or groups. Although Facebook has a similar format, I have always found it more engaging. This may also be because it is more popular with my friend group.
Another turn off of Twitter is its uncensored nature. Despite having many rules to protect the users, they are rarely enforced. It is admittedly difficult to police large online communities like Twitter. There is great deal of negativity and abuse on the platform. The political climate of Twitter is also a turn off, and I have never found any useful/helpful information via the medium.
I am willing to give it a try in this context, but don’t expect to find that it will it be any better than previously.
Welcome to the blog world!
Hi Vanessa, Twitter is way more of a Wild West platform than others. I’d recommend carefully curating who you follow, and maybe ignoring the new “For You” tab for a while.
Brett,
I didn’t even know about the “For You” tab it’s been so long since I looked at Twitter, but I will take your advice.
Hi Vanessa, I agree with you on the features you mention about Twitter. I remember that I would intentionally not get in Twitter for a while because some negative posts there would make my mood down. On the other hand, I also found that Twitter tend to have a lot of information about academia, whether it’s practical tips, honest POVs, or recruitment information, and its uncensored nature allowed me to be exposed to a wide range of people and content, which I found quite beneficial. So I’m now intentionally limiting my use of twitter to academic purposes, following people accordingly and using “Not interested in this tweet” feature for the tweet I feel negatively affecting me. Thank you for the very interesting post. It got me looking back on my Twitter use.
[…] platforms we feel most comfortable engaging with. I am not a fan of Twitter as I mentioned in a previous post. I find the platform to have a more toxic environment than most others. By asking our students to […]