The Bird Website#
One of my goals for the year is to learn to write better. I write technical bits and bobs at work but I’ve never really written for pleasure or for an audience of friends and acquaintances. Part of my plan to learn to write involves Twitter, Twitter is basically a multi-player game where you score points by writing. Seems like good practice. However, my use of Twitter has really dropped off in the past few years. I just don’t find it to be a pleasant website to use or be a part of.
Today, I plan to change that. And self-indulgently I’m going to write a little bit about how.
Tweeting#
I’m going to do more of it! I’m going to try and post at least one Tweet a day. I’m also going to try and change the content of what I Tweet about. Mostly I’m going to try and be more earnest. I’m going to talk more about things I genuinely care about. Earnest doesn’t always mean serious, I’m not suddenly going to eschew jokes. But less shitposting and more talking about computers, my cat, effective altruism, a good sandwich I had, transhumanism, and walking in the woods. I want to talk a little bit less about media I’m consuming. I don’t want this to become some kind of “professional” exercise, but I think I have better outlets for some of these other types of content.
Concretely:
- At least one Tweet per day about something I care about.
- Media I want to talk about in a monthly thread.
Following#
I think this is equally important. I want to change how I use Twitter by changing who I follow. In short, I’m only going to follow “friends” or “future friends”. That term is loose and I like it that way, lots of people count as my friend or might become friends (I’d love to use Twitter to make new friends). But there are also a lot of people who obviously aren’t my friends. Brands, politicians, news outlets, celebrities, academics. There are much better outlets for staying on top of current affairs and niche interests than Twitter.
I’m also going to try and use lists / muting to excise a lot of the politics I see on Twitter. I’ve recently been reading Politics is for Power by Eitan Hersh and it really resonates with me. I’ve been consuming politics as entertainment. It’s bad entertainment and bad politics. I’ll be taking a Justice Potter Stewart approach to politics, I know it when I see it. I’ll try to use muted words for this, but I’ll also probably have to move some friends to a “Good People Who Talk Politics” list and mute you. I’m sorry, it isn’t personal. If you do have something political you want to talk about with me, where you are genuinely working to solve an important problem for people you care about, please DM me. If it matters to you, I’m sure it will matter to me too.
Concretely:
- No politics as entertainment.
- Follow friends.
That’s More Than 280#
I hope Twitter can become a fun space again. An app I open because I get to talk about ideas I’m interested in with people I like.
I mean, maybe not, it is Twitter.