Am I the only one here who's "just not that into" Twitter?

[Alex P Notkeaton]

I have an account, but I almost never check it, and, since setting it up in February of this year, I have tweeted exactly twice: One about Republicretin obstructionism, the other about Chemeybush's long-lasting clusterfuck in Iraq. I'm sorry, but telling people I don't know about my family, my hour-by-hour (or minute-by-minute!) personal activities, the rash I had last week from the new detergent I tried, etc., simply isn't my thing.

On the other hand, I've posted on DU more than 270 times in barely a month here. I tell you, this place is fucking addictive!

[msongs]

1. same here made an account and used it a few days. life is too short for that sort of thing nt

[quinnox]

2. I never use twitter

And I only check facebook maybe once a month because I have family that likes to use it.

[liberal N proud]

3. I don't have a Twitter account

Hell, I just got a Facebook account last year.

I don't see me doing Twitter, it is too much right there, right now for me.

[Louisiana1976]

4. Same here--I've a Twitter account, but don't find it as interesting as DU and

Discussionist.

[abakan]

5. No Twitter or Facebook...

I'm just not that social!

[HockeyMom]

6. Got a Twitter account years ago

Never used it. Ok, I go on FB to talk to my kids who live in another state, and also people I have met online who share my common interests and live far away from me. I don't need to talk to either LIVE. If I need/want to, I can call my kids on the phone.

[elleng]

7. No, I don't tweet,

don't have an account.

[Warpy]

8. I'm not nuts about it, either

While I can economize on words as though they cost something, I find the format too confining.

I am registered and I find it useful during disasters the way any rumor mill is useful--if you hear the same thing from widely disconnected sources, it has a chance of being correct.

I think I've made about five posts in three or four years.

[Ron Green]

9. I use Twitter only for one purpose, which is

Health Care transformation and the fight for single-payer. I've become more hooked up with other people and groups whose "follows" and retweets help to educate me and to spread the movement.

[WinkyDink]

10. No Twitter for me! Too much of modern life is "controlled" by "OMG! I'm missing a comment by some

person I know and by thousands I don't! Tweet, tweet, tweet! Text, text, text! Message, message, message!"

I'm from the "WTH Cares?" School. Make that #wthcares.

[postulater]

11. #yesyouare

[ohheckyeah]

12. I have a Twitter account

and never use it. I'm so sick of television shows telling me to respond to hashtag blah blah blah. I'm watching the damn show, isn't that enough?

[catrose]

13. Nope

not signed up, don't expect to be. Never say never, but if I did, I'd say "never."

[2naSalit]

62. Me too. n/t

[Brickbat]

14. I love Twitter, but it took me awhile to figure out how to make it work for me.

[pnwmom]

25. So what do you love about it?

[Brickbat]

26. It's much easier to contact people to interview for my work, and I love connecting with people who

share my interests, in real time. I follow people who generate the news I'm interested in, and get information quickly and easily. It's a blast.

[Brickbat]

28. Also,

the more people you follow, the easier it is to get the point and to see how to make it work for you. If all you do is look at what's trending, or you only follow two people, it's not going to make a lot of sense.

[NightWatcher]

15. I like it. It's a great resource for instant news and communication

The searchable real time hashtags were a genius idea.

Like a lot of things these days, twitter is a tool. Use it for good, evil, or don't use it at all.

[GeorgeGist]

16. I think their primary purpose is to generate data ...

to be turned into money and power.

[GReedDiamond]

55. Deleted, posted in the wrong place...

...sorry.

[knownow]

17. No twit ish

Twitter is for others, I prefer DU as an information inlet.

[smirkymonkey]

18. No, you are not the only one.

Some of us just prefer to keep our lives free of social media.

[JVS]

19. I'm not into twitter either.

Twitter looks like the kind of thing that would appeal to the most prolific facebook users, you know the kind of person with 1000 FB friends who posts a shitload of stuff and gets a ton of likes.

[catbyte]

20. The only things I use Twitter & Facebook for are for passing on petitions

To show you how clueless I am, I discovered 2 year old Facebook messages I never knew were there, lol.

[dipsydoodle]

21. No account.

.

[onehandle]

22. I primarily use Twitter as a news feed.

I follow interesting people, organizations, companies, etc...

If I see something interesting, I click on the link.

[tech3149]

23. I've only made one tweet

That was to send cudos to Alexis Goldstein when she brought up the JOBS act on Chris Hayes show. It was the quickest and easiest way to express my thanks.

[Bobbie Jo]

24. Nope

Last edited Sun Jun 29, 2014, 05:46 PM - Edit history (1)

I have an account, but lost interest quickly.

[kiva]

27. So you just reminded me that

a. I don't like Twitter either, and
b. I am not sure why

I decided to get more opinions and found this, which makes perfect sense to me:

Mystery Solved: Why Some People Love Twitter — and Why Others Don’t

If you Google “Twitter is stupid”, you will find many people asking what Twitter is good for and why some people love it so much. They have tried and found it utterly useless. I did too...What bothers me about Twitter is that I do not understand it even theoretically. But now I think I’ve finally solved this big mystery.
..................
So, why do anyone use Twitter? There are a few factors involved, and I found some explanations on the Web but the key concept that we need to understand is how our sense of relevance is distributed across time. Let’s call it “time-relevance distribution”. Compare, for instance, a Wall Street trader and a carpenter. In order to do their jobs well, they need information.
..................
As you can see, the distribution of the Wall Street trader, as represented by the blue area, is heavily skewed to the recent past. To him, if any piece of information is more than a day old, it’s not particularly relevant or useful. In comparison, the carpenter, as represented by the red area, is not particularly concerned about the timeliness of the information. In fact, he is more interested in matters pertaining to timelessness.
.................
Because time-relevance distribution is different for everyone, we naturally choose mediums that are more appropriate for our own. If you are primarily concerned about timeless matters, you are going to have a hard time understanding why anyone would use Twitter because there is nothing interesting for you in the highly compressed area of the timeline for which Twitter is optimized.

http://dyske.com/paper/1020

This really makes sense to me - my focus is on timeless information, not so much timeliness.

[The Straight Story]

29. I love it, over 100 followers, I follow about 450 and keep it up all the time

I interact with reporters all over the world (many of whom follow me as well), I get news on the fly often long before I see it on main stream sites.

The Middle east, china, natives in Canada, etc - I am able to keep up with a slew of issues and not even do a search, just watch the feed. Pusblishing companies have lots of contests and all you have to do is retweet, won 3 books this month (not ebooks, the real thing, including a pre-release copy of a book intended for reviewers and editors).

I tweet back and forth on a regular basis with authors, people in movies/tv shows, etc - I follow the cast of Supernatural which includes several writers and get behind the scenes looks at the show (not to mention all the fun when they live tweet the episodes and fill you in on all the fun things that went into making some scenes).

[Separation]

30. I use it sparingly

Mostly for promotional ads, or info on a show or game that I watch or play.

[drm604]

31. I don't even have an account.

I already don't have enough hours in the day. I don't need one more thing to take up my time.

[LWolf]

32. I have an account

that I literally haven't looked at since I registered, when Twitter began however long ago that was. I don't remember how to log into it, I've never "tweeted" anything, wouldn't know how, and wouldn't know how to check "tweets" or get them on my phone...and don't want to.

To be honest, I don't, at this point, even remember what Twitter is supposed to be FOR; what the point is, who you would get "tweets" from, or anything else about it. If it weren't mentioned everywhere, I wouldn't even remember it existed.

Of course, I don't text anybody, either, and getting texts from people irritates me beyond belief.

[johnp3907]

33. I don't speak twit.

When someone posts a bunch of tweets here it looks to me like when Sarge Snorkel yells at Beetle Bailey.

[frazzled]

40. +1

I love the analogy!!

But seriously, that's my issue as well. I have no idea most of the time what anyone is actually talking about in that compressed, telescoped format. It's way too cryptic (urk, ark, ork) for this overly wordy person.

It must be part of my nature, in general: I also don't (usually) like movies that are very quickly and elliptically cut—all fragmented and whoop-whoop. (I make exception for films that use this as a stylistic element or that are making a particular point by including a sequence of fast-paced editing.) I remember the first film I saw that made me disturbed on this count was Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, all the way back in 1976. I was thinking ... what? whoa? slow down. It probably looks totally normal now.

I also like "slow food."

[johnp3907]

44. I can't watch those ADD edit movies either.

I gave up on TV years ago for this very reason. It's all cut cut shake WHOOSH!!!!

[elfin]

34. Twitter is handy for truly latest breaking

Ex. During the Boston Marathon horror, the postings there were most informative.

That's about it. Just one more venue for ego tripping in my view.

[MerryBlooms]

35. No account, and not so much as a twinge of desire for one. n/t

[femmocrat]

36. I joined when Keith Olbermann was off the air.

I haven't used it since then.

[riderinthestorm]

37. Nope. I'm the same. nt

[MH1]

38. Created an account, tried to get into it, just didn't.

My account is still alive but barely breathing. I never go there.

[Atman]

39. I've never posted on Tweet. Never will.

I just don't get it. Facebook and DU are bad enough.

[HeiressofBickworth]

41. No twitter, no facebook

I have email but rarely get an email.
My friends and I have a distinctly personal way of communicating. It's called a telephone. If one isn't home, voicemail picks it up. A very satisfactory arrangement, I must say.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

42. I have an account, but little enthusiasm

I logged in now and there is nothing but pictures of yesterdays lunch and women showing off their new sunglasses.

[L0oniX]

43. Nit twits ...for those who are sentence structure deprived.

[northoftheborder]

45. No twitter or facebook here.

email and DU are enough to keep me up to date


Plus: texting and phoning for instant communication

[betterdemsonly]

46. I think you are mistaking twitter for facebook.

That is the service I have no time for, but twitter is a good place to find links to news stories I am interested in.

[valerief]

47. I thought Twitter was for young people entertainment or live revolutions.

Do people use it for anything else?

[Coventina]

48. I've never used Twitter in my life.

I don't even know exactly what it is, TBH.

[Squinch]

49. What-er?

I don't have a Facebook account either.

Welcome to DU, Alex!

[devils chaplain]

50. Nope... I have zero interest in Twitter. n/t

[MADem]

51. I use my account to be able to see stuff when someone says "OOOOOOOOH, do you

see what so-and-so said on twitter?"

I don't see the charm of "Instagram" either. I've got drawers-ful and albums-ful of crappy, faded, blurry pictures. I don't need a computer program to make a "fake old" picture! I've got the real thing!

Same deal w/the facebook craze. It's handy to keep up with relatives, but I let them do the talking! Some of 'em won't shut up....!!!!! TMI!!!!

[Benton D Struckcheon]

52. Twitter is a news feed.

That's what I use it for. Breaking news breaks there first. Very few of the people I follow there are from my personal life. I use it for news and my business pursuits, such as they are.
Facebook is for personal stuff. I avoid Facebook like the plague, because I don't need people knowing about my personal life in excruciating detail. I don't even want to know about my life in detail. It's too damn boring.
As for this place: yeah, it's addictive. There's a few complaints I have about it, but overall, as forums go, it gets an A from me.

[Skittles]

53. no

and I ESPECIALLY detest having to listen to TWEET COMMENTS while watching the local news

[pa28]

54. I love it. I use Twitter for a news feed and it's marvelous for that purpose.

[Curmudgeoness]

56. I don't twit either.

Don't have an account....so you are one up on me.

[malokvale77]

57. No, you are not.

I don't do twitter or FB. My social life consists of real in person people.

DU is the only forum I have ever registered to. I don't post here much. I mostly just read.

[GReedDiamond]

58. I use Twitter to promote my music and art projects and interests...

...I'm up to 53,500+ followers, I add maybe 10-20 per day, depending on how much I work it.

I don't do facebook, so this is the alternative to that for me.

I actually like that there is a 140 characters (including spaces) limit on what may be tweeted, it forces me to get to the point.

[3catwoman3]

59. I, too, established a Twitter account when Keith Olbermann...

...departed from the TV waves, but I don't think I looked at it more than once. I wouldn't know how to find it now.

I have a Facebook account, but next to never look at it, let alone add anything to it.

I find much of what I have seen on both Facebook and Twitter incredibly pedestrian. "Out to lunch." Not, "Out to the best damn lunch ever had." OK - big whoop. I fully expect to see someone addicted to over sharing post something along the line of "Taking a leak."

Speaking of Facebook, I had a distinctly uncomfortable experience there a couple of days ago. I got an e-mail notification that one of my very closest friends from 3rd grade thru high school posted an update to her account. I took a look, and then scrolled back thru some older messages. i didn't get to far before I came across some hard right wing posts featuring a cartoon called LIBTARDS, featuring the Lucy and Linus characters. There were assorted other posts of a similar nature. I wondered how my friend would feel if she knew she were talking about me. We live 700 miles apart, so I will likely not be seeing her any time soon

I realize, of course, that here at DU we make some very critical and unflattering statements about many segments of the opposition. We do so on a message board that is clear about its political/philosophical leanings. I would never say some of the things I might say here on a forum like Facebook. Maybe that is cowardice, maybe is it being disingenuous, or maybe it is just good manners as I have no need to be deliberately provocative in a place frequented by the general public.

[Mugu]

60. No! n/t

[Gothmog]

61. I watch the #votingrights and @votersuppression feeds

There is some interesting information on these feeds

[customerserviceguy]

63. Me either

I have an account, but only by accident. Some jackass set one up using my email address (why, I have no idea) so I went in and changed the password on it. I only use it when I can get something from it, such as free airline miles for "following" an airline. Why they give anything for something so insignificant is beyond me, but if they're stupid enough, I'll take it.

Agree with you about DU being addictive!