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Posted By: artie505 There's still hope for the world! - 04/12/14 09:15 AM
Report: 44% of Registered Twitter Users Have Never Tweeted
Posted By: tacit Re: There's still hope for the world! - 04/12/14 07:50 PM
I can't say I quite understand the reason people seem to hate Twitter so much. It's proven to be a robust and resilient source of news (earthquake victims, people in besieged cities in Syria, and the citizens of Egypt all tweeted about what was going on long before any news sources pegged on to it), and there are some amazing people on Twitter.

My sweetie and co-author Eve Rickert and I met because of Twitter--she was in Portland for a science conference, I tweeted that I was going to an astronomy lecture hosted by Phil Plait, she decided to go to the lecture too, and the rest is history.

There's a reason repressive totalitarian governments do everything in their power to block access to Twitter. It has become one of the world's most formidable avenues of communication.
Posted By: artie505 Re: There's still hope for the world! - 04/13/14 04:34 AM
> I can't say I quite understand....

Of course you do!

It's because this and this, by way of example, are what people think of as Twitter...a bunch of mindless twits promoting themselves and a mass of mindless twits buying into it.

As you've correctly pointed out, though, there's another side to Twitter, i.e. feeds from people who are tracked into...well, whatever (I suspect that you're one of them.), and whose tweets are must-follows for others in the same business, with the same interests, etc., but I'm certain that that's a minuscule segment of Twitter, and not what the haters are reacting to.
Posted By: alternaut Re: There's still hope for the world! - 04/13/14 03:42 PM
Originally Posted By: artie505
...a bunch of mindless twits promoting themselves and a mass of mindless twits buying into it.

... that's a minuscule segment of Twitter, and not what the haters are reacting to.

You can extend that argument to other web activities or even the internet as a whole, by pointing to predominant and controversial aspects like pornography, malware etc. I'd be tempted to say 'Who cares?', if it weren't for those who'd like to throw out the baby with the bath water in perennially misguided attempts to force it into a one size fits all format.
Posted By: tacit Re: There's still hope for the world! - 04/14/14 11:10 PM
Well, that has nothing to do with Twitter, though. I mean, when you give anyone at all the ability to say anything they want, it turns out most people don't have much to say. Same as it's always been, I reckon.

So I don't understand why people direct hate to Twitter specifically, instead of to people who have nothing to say in general. The medium isn't the message, after all.

FWIW, my Twitter feed is here. I'll leave it to others to decide if it's a must-read or just a lot of pointless nattering. smile
Posted By: artie505 Re: There's still hope for the world! - 04/15/14 06:41 AM
Sure, but Twitter is stuck in the unhappy position of being the current poster-child for drivel, and as the vehicle, it inspires the hatred (the facts that the haters are under absolutely no obligation to deal with it in any manner whatsoever and that many probably don't notwithstanding ).

It's waaay easier to hate Twitter for giving idiots a stage than to hate individual idiots for taking advantage of the open mike.

(I had already looked at your Twitter feed before you posted, and I wasn't the least bit surprised to find that you hadn't stopped for gas or gotten your hair cut recently. tongue      I already knew that you're a fascinating character, but I've got to wonder how much of your Twitter following arises from your being the point-man for polyamory. I mean, how did Eve Rickert find you in the first place? I've got to doubt that she was cruising Twitter looking for somebody with whom to go to an astronomy lecture.)
Posted By: tacit Re: There's still hope for the world! - 04/15/14 08:19 PM
Originally Posted By: artie505
I already knew that you're a fascinating character, but I've got to wonder how much of your Twitter following arises from your being the point-man for polyamory. I mean, how did Eve Rickert find you in the first place? I've got to doubt that she was cruising Twitter looking for somebody with whom to go to an astronomy lecture.


Well, it's kinda a bit more complicated than that...

Eve runs a business called Talk Science To Me, which does science communication, editing, fact-checking, indexing, that sort of thing. She already knew about me from poly circles, sure, but she started following me from the Talk Science To Me Twitter account in part because I tweet about science as well as poly stuff.

When we met, she was in town for another conference, but ended up going to the astronomy lecture because she found out about it from my Twitter feed. We met again at a shindig hosted by the Museum of Science and Industry for the MARS Curiosity landing, and the rest, as they say, is history. (In our new book on polyamory, we thank NASA, the Curiosity mission, and astronomer Phil Plait for, completely unknowingly, making the book possible.)

So int hat sense, she wasn't specifically looking for people to go to an astronomy lecture with, but she WAS looking for people who tweet about science and science-related topics, which I sometimes do. Among, err, other things. smile
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