Comment by shruubi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shruubi | Hacker News Reader

I never really got into Twitter. I could never understand the point of posts limited to 140 characters and my severe lack of self esteem means I live my life believing that nothing I say is worth hearing or in any way remotely interesting.

In saying that, every time I've tried to "do" Twitter, I just find myself in this space where I feel a mix of sadness, anger, hatred and other negative emotions because 95% of Twitter is either people assuming the worst in everyone, calling other people every horrible name conceivable or just generally being another awful person in a sea of awful people.

The fact that I've never quite "got" Twitter has meant that I feel no attachment to it, and don't care if I remove it from my life, so it's not like I'm losing any sleep over it. But, it also helps immensely that removing Twitter from my life is like cutting off a necrotising limb that you never needed to begin with.

No reason you should use it. But your characterization of the general content is unfair.

There are millions of positive, thoughtful people using it for things other than "being awful". I follow a bunch of people in the ADHD and autism communities and get a ton out of hearing what their lives are like and how they're dealing with things. I also follow a bunch of academics so I get to hear a lot about niche topics from people who are world-class experts.

Twitter will show you whatever it thinks you want. If you follow a lot of awful people and engage with a lot of awful stuff, it will make sure you get plenty of it. But if you switch to the "latest tweets" view and are careful about who you follow, you can get a lot out of it.

Also, as somebody who used to have severe self esteem issues, I really encourage you to find a therapist you like and respect to work on that. They, plus the underlying issues, can make almost anything unenjoyable. As long as we have biases toward seeing ourselves negatively, anything that invites us to be ourselves will feel negative.

Edit: Fresh from the top of my timeline, here's an example of the sort of positive niche content from the ADHD/autism communities, a discussion of experiences with medications for ADHD: https://twitter.com/HolSmale/status/1477308561256558595

You can use it as a write-only log. You have a clever thought or idea, or did something you think is cool? Share it, and you now have a public log for yourself, or for your friends. You don't have to look for interactions, Twitter is a horrible tool for that, but the interface makes it very simple to share a quick thought.

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