Thought I had COVID-19 the other day but it turned out I’d just messed up my nose by sauteeing a whack ton of jalapeños until they smoked. So I’m still here. Still working on some projects – a book, an exhibition catalogue (when will people start going to exhibitions again?), and a collection of essays for an academic conference (which might not take place, but they can still publish the essays). Being alive and well, I have time to write a second post about Twitter.
These are tips for people who fear Twitter for approximately the same reason I used to: because they perceive it as the place where radical haters go to pour hate on each other and engage in periodic virtual-ritual sacrifice of individuals marked for destruction by inscrutable gods.
If this kind of thing gives you panic attacks but you want to take advantage of the good stuff Twitter has to offer, decide in advance what you want from Twitter, and only follow people who provide that.
Seems obvious, right? But it’s not what I did my first time around. I followed people because they were friends or acquaintances in real life, because they worked in my industry, because they had followed me and I felt obliged to reciprocate, because they were good performing artists, because they had cute dogs, or because they once showed up in my feed expressing an opinion I shared. All these categories contained people who led me down Panic Attack Lane.
I deleted my Twitter account but returned about a year later, after listening to this podcast. And by carefully curating the new account, I got what I wanted, which for the most part was cultural/current events commentary by people with an insightful but rather detached, view-from-nowhere perspective. I follow other kinds of people, e.g. joke writers, but I unfollow them if they are being dreadful. It’s that simple. I enjoy Twitter now. It makes me learn things, think new thoughts, and laugh.
Some recommendations: Venkatesh Rao is a prolific coiner of terms and identifier of trends (“the great weirding,” “premium mediocre,” “domestic cozy”); his article Internet of Beefs is my favorite article of 2020 so far. Peter Limberg is a modern Stoic (modern Stoic Twitter is very serene) who wrote a highly informative analysis of The Memetic Tribes of Culture War 2.0 with a handy chart. Kulturinstinkt, formerly The Nightjar, is all over the place, in the best possible way. She’s a genuine cosmopolitan who is both eclectic and deep. Read her essays at Lapsus Lima, “a weekly journal for the undomesticate design scholar.” The Theory of Enchantment account encourages us to ground our public discourse in love. For comedy, you could start with Sage Boggs, the Triscuit Guy.
I don’t tweet so I can’t advise you on that, but this person can.
Now go enjoy Twitter!