Twitter C/D

do i have a tumblr beefcake blog i "curate" on my other laptop while i wfh? truly, who can say

I was going to say, the “porn” ban happened two owners ago. Who even knows what’s going on with moderation

one more quote from that article that resonated:

Bean Dad is very simple. It means one thing — your website is poorly run. That’s it.

It means that context collapse has gotten so bad and the scale of your trending algorithms are so completely out of whack that a total moron tweeting about beans can create the same level of discussion within your community as the Trump Georgia call. It means that your users are so desperate for your made up internet points that they would consider turning an extremely mundane story about using a can opener into a TWENTY-THREE tweet thread and are also so vicious and insane and bored that they would turn that thread about beans into a national scandal.

I mean... maybe people are so fucking tired of harbingers of societal collapse over which they have zero agency (Trump Georgia call) that they jump on goofy freakshows for kicks?

If all the bean dad energy had been converted to hectoring Trump with "have you no decency, sir" we'd finally have him!

i think at least part of his point is that twitter has almost no control over its user base and whatever the original purpose of twitter was (brief information updates?), it's now degenerated into "here for the trainwreck"

People have always loved irrelevant bullshit, I really don’t understand the hand wringing abt this story ...

otm

Whatever the assholes who founded Twitter intended, it was always going to be an outlet for millions of people to goof off and vent. The idea that it's supposed to be serious is much worse than it being a constant stream of irrelevant bullshit and dick jokes.

Facebook wasn't undermining democracy when boomers were playing Farmville 17 hours a day and insulting each others' recipes.

until apps took off on phones it really wasn’t obvious that it’d ever get very big!

like the first year or so of twitter was just small groups of friends tweeting at each other, and at the very beginning it was via sms. you could turn notifications on/off on a per-person basis so you’d get a text when your friend “tweeted”

oh, also the main page was literally all tweets on the service

Before I knew what bean dad was I saw a tweet that was riffing on it like “if my dad made me spend hours opening can of beans when I was a kid...” that in the abstract seemed creative and funny but then seeing other people reference it and finding out that it’s actual thing was way less enjoyable. It’s almost like a novelistic parody of an annoying Twitter topic at this point.

Tweeting about the Trump call doesn’t necessarily have to be “have you no decency Sir” in the replies as much as just publicly acknowledging “hey this is uniquely fucked up” though arguably that’s just as futile tbf

that substack essay was good

it’s obvious why this sort of shit is good for twitter, it’s basically like the way espn used to use first take, have some moron blowhard like stephen a smith or skip bayless make a headline, get the athlete’s response, turn the whole thing into a news story. it’s printing money and people are too stupid to realize it’s rotting their brains

they’re giving stephen a smith his own show, right?

the system works

People have always loved irrelevant bullshit, I really don’t understand the hand wringing abt this story ...

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Monday, January 4, 2021 3:41 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

bean dad was good i enjoyed the bean dad experience, the thing that twitter does thats bad is like letting nazis organize, not goofing on some podcaster

and its not even rotting my brain in fact my brain is becoming larger with every post... like a galaxy

and obvs the difference between bean dad and stephen a smith is bean dad is an authentic clown where stephen a is a (brilliant) schtick, twitter gives us the real stuff

—It means that your users are so desperate for your made up internet points that they would consider turning an extremely mundane story about using a can opener into a TWENTY-THREE tweet thread and are also so vicious and insane and bored that they would turn that thread about beans into a national scandal.—

the article is funny cause its infected with the energy it claims to be critiquing, and obvs the bean dad story if true, which its not, is totally freaking psycho and not mundane

i love twitter and have learned an absolute ton following tons of smart and interesting people. also i have no idea wtf “bean dad” is. you lot are insane.

you dont know bean dad and yet already love him, strange

The pulse that my tweet skipped indeed

_
Tumblr porn ban truly underrated butterfly effect here

― scampish inquisition (gyac), Monday, January 4, 2021 7:50 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink_


*ahem* just fyi the ban isn't being as strictly enforced anymore

jumped 'ship

I genuinely thought bean dad was good posting, punchy, kept me interested etc. also even if true I don't think it's that bad, sort of feel like if you have kids you should be allowed to do that shit from time to time, not that I have kids but one can imagine being driven to do such zany things

he definitely posted in the exact style of a guest on this american life or w/e

wrong on both counts sorry kevin your canceled

we shd all be more like mr snrub at all times, knowing what's going on is doing no end of bad

wrong on both counts sorry kevin your canceled

― lag∞n, Monday, January 4, 2021 4:36 PM (nine minutes ago)

wow harsh well this is why I hope I never have kids

mods a canceled is posting

no airplay for double-k

smh even ILH is turning on me over my bean dad opinions

i think at least part of his point is that twitter has almost no control over its user base and whatever the original purpose of twitter was (brief information updates?), it's now degenerated into "here for the trainwreck"

― the serious avant-garde universalist right now (forksclovetofu), Monday, 4 January 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Why would twitter having control over its user base be a good thing?

so that said user base doesn't engage in fascist shitstorming? and, if you're twitter, because it means your "website" and "business model" are in jeopardy.

jumped 'ship

online communities without gatekeeping p consistently degrade into trainwrecks and spam, whether or not fascism and incitements to terrorism are involved

i would say that "moderation ≠ control" but a mod forced me to post this

iirc ilx was itself created as a petri dish to find out what happens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTS0A9V5OvI

Yeah to me that's a lack of moderation, acting on complaints etc. Different issue from Bean dad going off on one, or ppl going off at him xps

bean dad would want us to moderate ourselves

dude is just saying that twitter is broken and everybody knows it; the emergence of "bean dad" is a late stage symptom, not a rosetta stone to explain why/how

i'm bummed that i can't readily find t ewing's thesis about ILX, can somebody help me out here?

There is "guy" on twitter every day in most of its communities xp

If Twitter is broken, that assumes it was ever good or at least better, which is highly questionable.

forks:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2501/S1470785308200043

thanks!

ILX threads frequently compare the current state of the community to its earlier days, often unfavourably: the boards now are supposedly less intelligent, or less friendly, or less interesting than they used to be. These threads are rarely conclusive but testify to the level of engagement
the community fosters, and serve as a vent for individual and collective frustrations. They also demonstrate the fact that ILX has evolved a degree of self-awareness – it thinks of itself as having a unique culture.

it thinks of itself as having a unique culture.

ah, lads, 'tis a grand thing to have a unique culture now, isn't it? it fills one's lungs down to their bottom from sheer pride and lightens one's steps all the day long.

All the problems of a couple of ordinary dads in this crazy world dont amount to a tin of beans is essentially what we are saying here

wow how did I not know about that thesis