Stop Writing Twitter Threads

Re:Stop Writing Twitter Threads by afavour on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @01:25PM (#33333563)

I think you’re presenting absolutes where there aren’t any here. People read deeply on Twitter sometimes too. Let’s say there’s a 100% chance of a blog reader deeply considering what you’re saying but only a 10% chance of the same happening on Twitter. If your tweets get 10.1x traffic your blog does then Twitter is still a better platform for broadcasting your thoughts.

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Re:Stop Writing Twitter Threads by time_to_smile on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @01:42PM (#33333785)

I think you missed the point where the media itself does shape the way you write.

There is no Twitter equivalent to a post or essay you've spent multiple days writing, tweaking, reworking and then finally publishing. I've never started a single essay with "a thread 1/?".

Twitter abhors subtly and nuance. I have nearly 10k followers, the highest upvoted tweets I've made are always the most polemical, flippant statements I make. Anything nuanced or remotely complex is ignored. Any statement that makes people a little uncomfortable or is off brand will lose followers. Twitter encourages bad writing and bad thinking.

And people don't read tweets as deeply as other content. It is extremely rare to see engagement on a tweet that is more than a few days old, yet blog posts I've written years ago get frequent revisits and rereads. I've had classes and organizations make my posts required reading, I've never heard of that happening with a twitter thread.

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