Twitter: Not for $8 a Month

Twitter to me has always been a thing to look at in a spare moment, and way too often I was stunned and shocked by what some posted or replied with. What I liked about it was you could just follow anybody. You didn't need to ask to be a friend if they posted interesting stuff.

I have 200+ followers but have never talked with more than 10 people there ever. Always thought many of the followers were just bots.  Have come across two or three interesting people.  Having a lot to say doesn't make you interesting, just opinionated. Also just a lot of nothing small talk and food pictures. There are a LOT of opinionated people on Twitter, and I often think, "don't they have anything better to do than write crap or whine on social media?"

And then someone posting this trivia also tells me how significant and important Twitter is. To me, not at all.

Such posts do get interaction.  Look at that 11k views and hundreds of likes but, really, why would anyone care about the "avocado I prefer",  or the hundreds of other trivial questions and answers posted?  Just a waste of time to me. The Lowest Common Denominator is what these, and the bumper sticker catch phrase "you are loved" /"you are wonderful" posts aspire too. 

A few months ago I made a Mastodon account and have found it to be a less aggressive, nicer place. Don't have the exaggerated fake followers either. Most of the people I talk with moved over too. Without an algorithm behind it, and the way the hashtags for search work, looks to me like there is a short window of time in which people will notice something you post. 

A few I follow refuse to leave Twitter though. They have more followers than I and seem to give some value to them.  That they "worked" to build their following. They justify their continued use of Twitter as "nothing else is as good". I don't see value in numbers of followers at all. But I am also not trying to become a Internet "Influencer" or "Celebrity". Likes on anything have no value. Likes on really uninteresting "lowest common denominator" posts are especially uninteresting and worthless.  

From my own analytics have found Twitter to be the worst for posting a link to something we have made like a comic, illustration, video of music and getting anyone to look it.  Just interaction on the kind of thing I am interested is poor.  Think most Twitter followers must be bots, and useless.

Facebook is shown to be more useful to me  ( by not being totally useless like Twitter), yet the "must stay on Twitter" crowd say how much better Twitter is. I don't get it. It must be tide up in their own self worth "Internet celebrity" status or something.

Leaving your Twitter time line has always just had too much FEAR OF MISSING OUT attached to it.  I think the way Twitter looses where I was on the time line whenever I came back from one of those links was done on purpose to build that fear.  Facebook has a different approach but Analytics shows more interaction from there than Twitter. .

So Twitter isn't worth $8 a month to me. No way. And if you don't pay, you become a 3rd class citizen. So it is becoming even less useful to me. At start of March 2023, the site has gotten so slow to load. I found the pre-Musk Twitter 99.99% a waste of time that should have been spent doing something else.  So paying for the privilege to have your time wasted is just crazy and out of the question.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology