

What I would have written - bradgessler
http://dcurt.is/what-i-would-have-written

======
bigiain
'and every fucking thing I think about, I also think, “How could I fit that
into a tweet that lots of people would favorite or retweet?”'

That, as I see it, is the problem – not twitter or 140char limits or any of
the other stuff Dustin raises, it's the desire for external validation (and I
can't help but imagine him furiously clicking reload on his own blog post to
see how fast his Kudos score is climbing…)

My takeaway/advice is - try to recognise when you're being manipulated by
gamification techniques and choose to be aware of them and ignore/resist them
when it's in your better interest.

Does anybody _really_ think Picasso would have painted iPad trifles for
immediate social media validation, instead of starting and completeing Garçon
à la pipe? I _seriously_ doubt that - from Wikipedia: "At the time of his
death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art
market what he did not need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable
collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such
as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works."

Picasso _didn't_ paint for the twitterati - he painted for Picasso. Dustin
should write for Dustin - not for Twitter. He's allowing himself to become
distracted from achieving what he wants at achieve. That's not Twitters fault.
Procrastinators gonna procrastinate (he said hypocritically while wasting time
on HN…)

~~~
snowwrestler
I liked what comedian Louis CK had to say on this subject recently:

[http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell-
phone](http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell-phone)

My experience is that writing long, insightful pieces of prose is just hard,
miserable work. People do it because they feel compelled to, not because it's
a fun way to relax. So it's easy to procrastinate or avoid it, especially if
there aren't any external demands or deadlines to meet.

~~~
smacktoward
I dunno, it's fun for _me_ \-- I find writing a long essay to be
contemplative, meditative. It requires you to challenge your own thinking,
which is both interesting and a little bit scary.

But I'm willing to believe I'm an outlier in this regard.

~~~
MysticFear
I dunno its fun. I find writn a long essay to be zen. It req you to challnge
ur own thinkn, is both interestn and lil bit scary #ImAnOutlier

140 characters

------
jasonkester
There must be a group of people somewhere in the world that actually uses
Twitter. I've never met any of them in real life, but occasionally I see
things like this online that suggests that however far fetched the idea might
be, it's nonetheless true.

Amazing that this author is so upset about what this random website has done
to his life. I have no idea how he could have found enough value in it to have
integrated it into his life so deeply. Nor can I understand why he would
continue using it if it made him unhappy.

In short, seven years later, I still don't get what Twitter is for or why
anybody would use it.

~~~
Tichy
If you don't use it, it's probably hard to understand.

~~~
bnegreve
But most successful online services are attractive even without knowing much
about them. Tweeter doesn't feel attractive at all.

The consequence is that after seven years Tweeter simply _ignored_ by half of
the IT population.

------
evmar
Much like television, smoking, or facebook, it's pretty easy for me to look at
these products, look at what the users get out of them, and make the conscious
decision not to use them. That isn't to say it's easy to quit smoking, but
it's been pretty easy for me to never start smoking because I know what sort
of personality I have.

(When writing comments like these I always think of this article:
[http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-
mention...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-
he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/) . Sorry if I've done that.)

------
md224
"And yet I see no solution to this problem."

Dustin's problem is similar in some respects to an addiction (which he alludes
to), so perhaps the solution is treating it as such; forcing moderation on
himself, or even complete detachment (the cold turkey approach). Of course,
being involved in technology means Dustin is essentially an alcoholic working
at a brewery, so disengagement may be especially difficult. But to throw up
your hands and claim there's no way out strikes me as a bit defeatist. If you
feel a technology is negatively impacting your thought patterns, perhaps you
could find a way to use that technology less.

~~~
coldtea
>*"Dustin's problem is similar in some respects to an addiction (which he
alludes to), so perhaps the solution is treating it as such;"

The issue I see with this is that it takes the way we use technology for
granted. It's just like saying "that stuff is here to stay, learn to deal with
it".

Which it is true in practice, but doesn't have to be true necessarily.

We could have opted as a society to not tolerate those kind of addictive (and
mind-crushing) applications of technology, instead of celebrating them.

(The same way we have done with smoking, not just the banning in public
places, but the whole attitude towards it).

~~~
pauly007
Placing the emphasis on society, I believe, dilutes the great importance of
the decisions of the individual. In life you should take responsibility for
your own actions first. The question is more "Is twitter a social problem?" or
"Is my twitter use a problem?".

~~~
coldtea
> _Placing the emphasis on society, I believe, dilutes the great importance of
> the decisions of the individual. In life you should take responsibility for
> your own actions first._

I guess that's also a difference between different country's philosophies.

For me, taking "responsibility for your own actions" is a bad advice when
there's stuff that needs to change at the societal level. We wouldn't say that
about an issue we deem important, like racism.

We understand there that it's not just what some person believes or not, but
also certain general norms, distractions, laws etc that effect this, and we
strive to change those.

What I say is that technological change should be seen with the same critical
eyes, not just as a inevitable constant each one should put up with or shut
up, but as in "do we, as a society want to progress in this or that way? What
world would we rather live in?".

------
breadbox
I've stopped cooking for myself because TV dinners are so easy. But most TV
dinners aren't great. But because they're so convenient, they have killed my
desire to cook. _And yet I see no solution to this problem._ "

Keep looking.

------
tripngroove
John Mayer speaking at Berklee College of Music had this to say on the
subject:

> “The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long.
> You’re coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes
> long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn’t have a complete thought
> anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and
> I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I
> started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make
> my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.”

[http://www.berklee-blogs.com/2011/07/john-
mayer-2011-clinic-...](http://www.berklee-blogs.com/2011/07/john-
mayer-2011-clinic-manage-the-temptation-to-publish-yourself/)

------
bambax
> _And yet I see no solution to this problem._

How hard can it be not to tweet?? I came here just to say this, and saw that
many others had just said the same thing, and yet I felt the urge to say it
again, myself! O, irony!

Seriously though, Twitter isn't like TV or smoking. Nicotine is one of the
most addictive substance there is; TV isn't really addictive, in a
medical/chemical sense, but it's so _easy_ \-- you sit on the couch and you
get distracted by funny/mildly interesting things with sound and images.

But Twitter? You have to make a conscious decision to tweet, it's not a
_default_ like TV... Reading tweets is boring, writing tweets is work... How
can it be difficult to not do it?

I guess I just don't get it.

~~~
jdiez17
Since when are TVs "a default"? I don't think I've watched TV in a big while,
I don't even remember TVs being generally on around me.

~~~
bambax
Well, they appear to be. I don't have a TV myself, but in many homes when
there's a TV, it seems to be on all the time. Sometimes people mute it to eat
lunch or dinner, without even turning it off...

~~~
jdiez17
Hm, I see. That's not the case where I come from, so I'm wondering if it's a
US thing.

------
uptown
"And yet I see no solution to this problem."

The solution is to not solely crave affirmation from others. Be comfortable
with yourself, and try to live a life that enriches yourself, and those around
you. If the parts of that that you share happen to enrich those you come in
contact with, great ... but the internet-celebrity that Twitter and other
social-platforms encourages (how many followers, how many retweets, how many
favorites, how many likes, etc.) is fleeting at-best.

------
kylehardgrave
"And yet I see no solution to this problem. I will forever be a slave to
140-characters..."

I'm having a hard time sympathizing with this.

It's not Twitter that "instantly takes complex ideas out of my brain, over-
simplifies them, and ships them off to random people." It's ME. Twitter is
just a medium — the solution is to care about those complex thoughts enough to
see them through.

Not to say that the instant gratification of tweeting does not exist, or is
easy to fight — it's a struggle, and something to be mindful of. But the
battle is already lost when, as this article does, you shift all the blame to
the service instead of looking inward.

------
Sukotto
I just came here after reading this (highly relevant) ZenPencils of Marc
Maron's "Social Media Generation".

Very impactful one-two punch seeing both of these back to back.

[http://zenpencils.com/comic/129-marc-maron-the-social-
media-...](http://zenpencils.com/comic/129-marc-maron-the-social-media-
generation/)

------
rwallace
I see a solution to the problem. Delete your twitter account, now. It's hard
to sustain willpower indefinitely but easy to use it in a burst long enough to
delete an account.

~~~
bcoates
Twitter has a 30 day waiting period on account deletion to subvert this. What
you need to do is set your password to something really obvious and disable
two-factor.

~~~
6d0debc071
Or randomise your password so you can't get into it.

------
sengstrom
I don't do twitter, but I have wondered what it would be to write or read a
longer work composed within the limits of 140 character chunks - parceled out
over time. It is not so much the size limitation on tweets as it is the
disconnect between them that causes the dissolution of bigger ideas.

~~~
mreid
Jennifer Egan did a New Yorker story called "Black Box"[1] that was
intentionally composed as sub-140 character chunks. It was released on Twitter
tweet-by-tweet and collected in a New Yorker science fiction special last
year.

She is an impressive and experimental writer (check out her "Visit from the
Goon Squad") who does a great job with this form. The thought-sized chunks
give the story a lot of space and cleverly invites the reader to imagine a lot
of context.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_(Jennifer_Egan_story)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_\(Jennifer_Egan_story\))

------
wunderlust
Woe is me...Twitter has stunted my creativity. Give me a break.

------
freyfogle
Post is too long, can someone please summarize? Ideally in <140 chars. Ta.

~~~
6d0debc071
140 chars not enough for complex thoughts - emphasis on applause buttons over
reasoned discussion. But, it's addictive - social validation.

------
smacktoward
I tend to agree with this. So much so that I made a more in-depth version of
the same argument on my own blog earlier this year:
[http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-
twitter/](http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/)

I think the biggest contributor to the feelings Dustin is talking about is the
way Twitter's design puts scorekeeping mechanisms front and center. Follower
count is a scorekeeping mechanism -- if I have more followers than you, I'm
"better" at Twitter than you are. Retweets are a scorekeeping mechanism -- if
I get retweeted a lot, I'm better than you are. And so forth. Scorekeeping
mechanisms are problematic because when you make them public, put them right
up in the user's face, they turn the application into a video game. People see
a connection between some actions and an increase in their "score," and that
drives them to repeat the same behaviors.

Which is sort of what Dustin's getting at with the comparison to addiction, I
think; Twitter is addictive in the same way that, say, Farmville is addictive.
It's a Skinner box
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber))
rather than a medium designed to facilitate discussion.

------
waxjar
Is he seriously comparing himself with Picasso? I knew Mr Curtis thinks quite
highly of himself, but this surprises me.

Just get off Twitter if you really feel this way, Mr. Curtis. It's not that
hard.

------
Goopplesoft
Tweets provide a lot of efficiency. "Tweets aren't great because the compress
otherwise complex ideas". A decent summary of your essay and tweet-able. Point
made in 5 seconds of reading. Yes you don't get the full emersion but thats
exactly why both mediums still exist. The tweet saves time and consequently
gets a wider audience.

~~~
jacques_chester
It often takes multiple restatements of an argument to get it to sink in,
because different readers are affected differently by any given set of words.

It often takes an essay (or a book, or a series of books, or a body of
literature) to fully map out the consequences of what initially seems simple.

It can be difficult to truly impress the emotional texture of a concept in 140
characters without relying on cheap appeals -- which obscure the actual
concept.

Here's the tweetable problem with trying to convey deep concepts on twitter:

    
    
        Easy come, easy go.

------
jviddy
One perfect idea, distilled to it's essence can be easy shared in less than
140 characters. No all idea's but some. It's just a matter of finding the
right idea and taking the time to express it correctly.

Having said that, I'm really not a fan of twitter, but that's for completely
different and unrelated reasons

------
krmmalik
My experience has not been the same. I've written complete blog posts based on
Twitter and Facebook status updates.

------
drharris
Are we really still talking about 140 characters these days? Why can't we just
let it go, let it be?

------
bowerbird
you'll get over the addiction to twitter, and retweets, and likes, and
favorites...

you'll realize it's a game, a _stupid_ one, and you'll taper off, and then
quit totally, or close enough that you'll feel human again.

before that, you'll ramp up, and ramp up again, chasing dragons, hoping to get
the feeling back, \-- "smoking more, but enjoying it less?" is how it was put
in a classic advertising campaign -- but it won't work, and you'll get sick
and tired of the whole thing, and walk away, with a mix of tremendous relief
plus an overwhelming sadness.

but walk away you will, and recover you will, and you'll end up older,
smarter, and wiser next time.

your first revelation -- i am telling you this so you'll recognize it -- is
that addiction made you far too preoccupied with yourself, what you "would"
have done, or "could" have, or "should" have, and you'll recognize first that
you should just _do_, and second (and more importantly) that you need to pay
some attention to the other people around you, who you love, and not dwell so
much on yourself...

-bowerbird

~~~
RobertHoudin
This is spot-on.

I feel like I have emerged from a long dream, and now I'm walking around,
waiting for everyone else to wake up.

------
InclinedPlane
"I sit on the couch watching whatever is on TV. It's not very entertaining but
it's something to do, and after a while you get used to it. And yet I see no
solution to this problem."

What are we, automatons? Farm animals?

This isn't rocket science, if you want to stop being a hack then stop being a
hack. You have a brain, you have a developed intellect, if you have sufficient
introspection to realize you're doing something you don't want to be doing
then maybe try not doing that thing. I have a hard time believing that twitter
is more addictive than alcohol or heroin or even television.

Nothing's forcing you to be a hack other than your own vanity. And there's
nothing intrinsically superior to being addicted to seeking bite-sized chunks
of personal validation through twitter than there is in seeking feelings of
comfort, camaraderie, and friendship through television viewership. Yet if
someone wrote about the perils of being a couch potato and the difficulty of
stopping we'd just laugh at them and move on.

------
lifeisstillgood
I think dcurtis should not be vilified for "seeking external validation". He
is building up Internet _capital_ , turning google juice into a brand. No one
claims Warren Buffet is seeking external validation for building up his
capital?

A while back I realised I was emailing myself ideas (for essays, just random
interesting connections) with the hope I would one day go back and turn them
into articles and put them up. guess what?

so I now have a wordpress app on my phone and I force myself to take an extra
minute to turn a two sentence thought into a two paragraph idea. so I have
actually published ideas - and I will pull actual longer, researched, articles
from there.

what I think twitter does not provide, and is I think the next evolution of
twitter use, is 140 characters as a pull-quote. You cannot fit a thought into
140 characters but you often can fit a headline.

someone notes on here that there are already a lifetime of insightful essays
available - bit where are they? how do I find them and especially find them at
the right time ?

Discovery as a search function is still in its infancy - I probably do want
google to know what I am thinking so it can give me the essays that will most
help expand those thoughts.

------
Pxtl
tl;dr

