My assumption is that we shouldn’t underestimate the volume of nonsense that a person can tolerate when their attention span has been reduced to banana skin fiber over the course of their lifetime. Combine that with the addictive qualities of the platforms and a desire to harvest maximum stimulation with minimal effort.

Recently I noticed how overwhelming some posts on HN can appear. 400-500 comments, the top rated comment alone splinters into 78 sub-narratives and criticisms. Contrarily I feel like parsing this takes a lot more effort than Twitter. People put a lot more effort in their HN comments compared to a Tweet, and we are held to a different standard here in terms as what we say and how we say it. Also consider the fact that Twitter offers a variety of content while HN offers one primary form (text; I’m purposely excluding what links that are shared offer and am discussing primarily the core of the HN experience which is the conversation on the actual site).

I say all of this to say, how do people have the time in their day to even scroll here? When you follow nobody (unless you subscribe to some users comments with an RSS reader, an option I’m becoming more fond of) and you actually have to do a lot of reading and thinking as compared to a deluge of Tweets that can be grasped in a matter of seconds.

On one hand, this is what makes HN an exceptional website in a way. On the other hand, what makes Twitter appealing to others is what makes it exceptional compared to other websites and why it’s doubtful that the majority of its user base will leave, unless the layout changes.

Overall, I think topics like literacy, intellectual curiosity, taste…and a lack thereof, contribute to why Twitter is either appealing and unappealing (I don’t tweet).