Yeah, Twitter is really bad. Every discussion, no matter how trivial, devolves into a flame fest. I've told this story on HN before, but I was reading some minor controversy about Hearthstone esports and eventually the thread devolved into people threatening to kill each other. Over someone that made a dumb mistake in one of their games. It is crazy.

I think some of us use a lot of electronic communication for work, so we kind of get the idea that there is a human at the other end of these threads. The average Twitter user has not quite made that connection yet, and see it more of public performance art than person-to-person communication. The results are not good.

(There is also some cultural thing going on right now where it's no longer OK to compromise on anything. This results in extreme polarization everywhere.)

Twitter, more so than Facebook even, is 100% dependent on who you follow. I choose academics, (good) journalists, etc. My feed is constantly enlightening, I learn something everyday, and there's no gossip or BS. Every time someone posts a selfie or some food they are eating, they are gone.

I love it.

Also: muting. You can not only mute trolls that sneak into your feed, but entire words and people. After a few weeks of customization it's almost full proof.

I came back to Twitter after a 4 year hiatus to my account which formerly had thousands of followers in my hobby niche. Wow is it horrible now. I don’t remember it being so polarizing and negative constantly. I find that to be the case for many Internet communities (e.g. Reddit).

I guess it depends on who you follow, what you mute, and who you block.

The most negative energy I get now is people begging for money, because they don't have enough and need some more. The classy ones try to sell something other than a sob story.

Maybe I should mute "Ko-Fi", "GoFundMe", and "Patreon".