Please RT
June 15, 2012 5:49 AM   Subscribe

Please RT
posted by latkes (65 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
...and I thought this was going to be about the Russian Television english news service.

It's not. Carry on.
posted by hippybear at 5:55 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


#scrollingsuicidenoteofwesterncivilizationftw please RT
posted by mcstayinskool at 5:59 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


Who uses Twitter for that? It's for getting all the startup people in your area together at a bar.
posted by michaelh at 6:00 AM on June 15, 2012


This seems like a poorly written rant disguised as a book report.
posted by DisreputableDog at 6:01 AM on June 15, 2012 [7 favorites]


shtick-ify, glimpser, World-Spirit, Facebook or face-to-face friends, narcissistical sublime, witticist, whateverism, coercive blogginess, paradoxically de rigueur relaxation, blogginess, blogorrheic, Oulipian arbitrariness ?????

"The economic cheapness of digital publication democratizes expression and gives a necessary public to writers, and types of writing, that otherwise would be confined to the hard drive or the desk drawer." OK, I agree with that part, and something about pots and kettles.
posted by HuronBob at 6:04 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


Twitter is not the problem. The banality and idiocy of humans are the problem. Twitter's just a window. There are good things on Twitter just like there are good things in real life. But Sturgeon's Law will continue to hold.
posted by DU at 6:05 AM on June 15, 2012 [9 favorites]


It's an odd essay. At first it seems like a "get off my lawn" rant against Twitter, but then acknowledges that it has the potential to be a potent literary form in the age of the Internet. I can definitely get behind the latter part: At its best, Twitter allows for the kind of epigrammatic writing that's been an enduring part of Western civilization, from Heraclitus to Nietzsche. (At its worst, of course, you have Chuck Grassley.)
posted by Cash4Lead at 6:06 AM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


The accidental progenitor of the blogorrheic style is David Foster Wallace. What distinguishes Wallace’s writing from the prose it begot is a fusion of the scrupulous and the garrulous; all of our colloquialisms, typically diffusing a mist of vagueness over the world, are pressed into the service of exactness.

This and several other passages in the article make me want to puke (in the ontological vomitorium of the Lacanian other) forever.
posted by dagosto at 6:07 AM on June 15, 2012 [6 favorites]


Not to derail, and I think a short answer would suffice, but I gotta ask: why is mefi so hostile to n+1? I regularly enjoy their stuff. Not all of it is great or anything, but it seems to be so hated here and I don't get it.

I enjoyed reading this piece, but like DU, I blame the user base. Not just for the banality of twitter, but for the banality of everything.
posted by broadway bill at 6:08 AM on June 15, 2012


Twitter is what allows my friends to reassure me that I won't actually die in a ditch before I finish a big, lonely project.

It's also great for seeing who's up for a round of ME3 Multi.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 6:08 AM on June 15, 2012


Brevity is the soul of wit. #brushupyourshakespeare
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:08 AM on June 15, 2012


Metafilter: the ontological vomitorium of the Lacanian other.
posted by jquinby at 6:08 AM on June 15, 2012 [7 favorites]


I'm always down for ME3 multi Narrative Priorities
posted by dagosto at 6:10 AM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've been sticking up for twitter for a while (even on here) and if you really want to see twitter shine, join Jason Kottke's stellari.io and watch as the best of the best roll out their epigrams.

Attacking twitter is like attacking email. It's just a medium.
posted by pwally at 6:11 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


It’s possible to have a clear attitude toward Twitter if you’re not on it.

The line about Hound Dog Taylor, a blues musician who died in 1975, was that "he couldn't play but two notes. But he could play the hell out of those two notes."

I was reading this article thinking, man, this is classic N+1, written like a smarter-than-average, sulky high school student who feels excluded but really isn't trying all that hard to change that.

They really only have that one note to play, but they play it pretty well.
posted by mhoye at 6:13 AM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


What's with all these non-professionals using words?! Mon dieu!
posted by chasing at 6:17 AM on June 15, 2012 [3 favorites]


why is mefi so hostile to n+1?

Because it's fine to spin bullshit about the Simpsons, or which Avenger's poster is best, but expecting people to read bullshit about Continental thinkers is beyond the pale?
posted by OmieWise at 6:19 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


If anyone was intrigued by the line "experimental poet in Calgary obsessed with the digitization of art," check out @christianbok.
posted by oulipian at 6:20 AM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


PS: I *love it* when creative tools -- even something as simple as Twitter -- are made available to the masses. The fact that Twitter, like the rest of the web, is an energetic mess of people doing all sorts of things -- even stuff that offends your tender sensibilities -- is what makes it awesome. Mass communication needs more democratization, not less. And fuck anyone fighting to take expressive tools out of people's hands.
posted by chasing at 6:25 AM on June 15, 2012 [6 favorites]


I swore I would never type this, but it's unavoidable: tl;dr
posted by tommasz at 6:26 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


What's with all these non-professionals using words?! Mon dieu!

Yeah, that's most of what irritates me about articles like this one. There tends to be this assumption that all Twitter users have identical goals: to entertain others, such that they can be at the center of the maximum amount of attention. But in my experience, most people use it as a sort of asynchronous chat client to stay in touch with their friends. I understand that the author of this article doesn't care about what I ate for lunch or photos of my cat in a bag, but my friends do, and that's who I'm talking to. Not everything has to be a performance for the Internet at large.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 6:27 AM on June 15, 2012 [5 favorites]


why is mefi so hostile to n+1?

People who write as though their gift for papering over small ideas with big words is a license for smug superiority are annoying.
posted by mhoye at 6:31 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]




Narrative Priorities: Absolutely. This is the age-old misconception people have about these new semi-public communication tools. It's like you're having a conversation at a public bar -- your words are out there and anyone can hear you. But what kind of dick comes over while you're talking to someone else and gives you shit for not being interesting enough? (I mean, besides the editors of n+1.)
posted by chasing at 6:34 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


"It has also brought about a surprising revival of the epigrammatic impulse in a literary culture that otherwise values the merely personal and the super-colloquial as badges of authenticity."

I wonder how long it took them to find "epigrammatic impulse" and "super-colloquial"? How long do writers struggle to find obscure words to make themselves look smart?
posted by Blake at 6:35 AM on June 15, 2012


I was always uncomfortable with how to use Twitter until I realized that it's really more useful as a compact news feed than a social network. I stopped worrying about tweeting or re-tweeting myself and just subscribed to news and local political feeds and use it strictly read-only.
posted by octothorpe at 6:35 AM on June 15, 2012


"People who write as though their gift for papering over small ideas with big words is a license for smug superiority are annoying."
^^Oh dear God this!^^
posted by Blake at 6:37 AM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


I wonder why the ignorant and illiterate are so resentful of a large vocabulary.
posted by Jestocost at 6:37 AM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


The line about Hound Dog Taylor, a blues musician who died in 1975, was that "he couldn't play but two notes. But he could play the hell out of those two notes."

In his autobiography, B.B. King retweeted that about Lightnin' Hopkins.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:38 AM on June 15, 2012


I wonder why the ignorant and illiterate are so resentful of a large vocabulary.

Save us heathens, o enlightened one!
posted by kmz at 6:40 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


Cats Eat Rats. plz RT #winning
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:41 AM on June 15, 2012 [3 favorites]


Dis thread is wack @metafilter
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:43 AM on June 15, 2012


Twitter is great for many reasons. However, anyone thinking of Twitter as "just a medium, like e-mail" or as a totally democratic tool for mass communication might want to take a step back and consider whether we really want these kinds of tools to take the form of a company controlled by a bunch of (well-meaning?) (for now?) venture capitalists / advertisers instead of, say, a set of standards (like HTML or e-mail) or open source technology.
posted by oulipian at 6:45 AM on June 15, 2012


>>I wonder why the ignorant and illiterate are so resentful of a large vocabulary.
touché
Though I'm not really resentful of a large vocabulary, it's really more of what mhoye wrote. There's no reason to ever use the phrase "epigrammatic impulse" it's not something you'd say when having a conversation, and it's not something that's easily read. It doesn't make me ignorant and illiterate to want clear and concise writing. My lack of education and interest in learning more about how to write/speak make me ignorant and illiterate.
posted by Blake at 6:49 AM on June 15, 2012


RT if you find work.
 
posted by Herodios at 6:52 AM on June 15, 2012


acknowledges that it has the potential to be a potent literary form in the age of the Internet.

It is a fact infrequently remarked upon that the most significant and potent literary form of the 20th century was the telephone call.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:56 AM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


I wonder why the ignorant and illiterate are so resentful of a large vocabulary.

When that large vocabulary is used merely to paint a pile of poo in gold, well, it's still poo.
posted by inigo2 at 6:57 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


I wonder why the ignorant and illiterate are so resentful of a large vocabulary.

You know, don't you, that some of those strings of letters weren't even words, right?
posted by HuronBob at 6:59 AM on June 15, 2012


Epigrams. Interesting, but it's not what Twitter's really about. It's more about knowing what your sister in LA did this afternoon, or what your college roomie thinks of the TV show you just watched. Odd, though that Twitter really seems to spend a great deal of its cycles on the faux intimacy of knowing the same things about some model you'll never even see with your own eyes.
posted by tyllwin at 7:00 AM on June 15, 2012


It’s possible to have a clear attitude toward n+1 if you’re not in on it. Few things could appear much worse, to the lurker, glimpser, or guesser, than this rambling suicide note of Western civilization. Never less than 140 pages at a time? Looks like the human spam span expanding like a French dirigible. The endless pontificating and commenting by other people’s pets? Sounds like a digital circle jerk. Cows were born to make the repetitive, pleasant, meaningless sounds called lowing. Wasn’t the whole thing about us featherless bipeds that we could give connected intelligible sounds a cumulative sense without taking sixteen pages to get to a simple point about how these kids aren't getting off my lawn?
posted by clvrmnky at 7:02 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


n+1 is proof that being smart and well-read doesn't make you interesting by default. Unsurprisingly, many n+1 articles are devoted to examining whether people who are less smart and less well-read can still be considered valuable. I enjoyed their book What Was The Hipster? because it starts off with a public forum that goes nowhere, and then they admit they don't know a fucking thing and devote the rest of the book to essays written by outside sources.

The truly interesting angle on Twitter (and this isn't a new one) is that the art of web development is the art of designing creative systems. On Twitter (or MeFi or Facebook), the thing you're creating isn't the focus, it's the facilitator for other people's creative interactions. It's a sort of art that either has to be location-based or digital, so it's only been a mass-media thing for a few decades, and we're still learning the rules which dictate how these things get made.

What's neat is how minute variations in rules can spawn entirely different creative grounds. Twitter and Facebook are two totally different arenas: because Facebook allows comments and when a user's tagged it shows up on her profile, the model is post-centric, whereas on Twitter the model's profile-centric: if I tweet at you, people who follow me but don't know you can still see what I'm saying. This means that the conversation centers around the participants, rather than around the specific location of the post (whereas on Facebook, a wall post and a status update-with-tag are both two-person interactions, but target different audiences).

The differences between creative activities are interesting, too. I find Twitter wit starts to grate on me if I follow it directly, though I enjoy the occasional binge in a clever account. Facebook wit is more centered around photo-sharing and funny tags; I particularly enjoy the sort of viral Facebook joke that spreads via people changing their profile pictures (when a couple picks identical profile pictures and their friends jokingly pick the same pictures for themselves, lols ensue). But possibly that's because my friends aren't sophisticated enough to hold conversations whilst being neverendingly witty, so humor modes that require less thinking appeal to use.

The takeaway is that something very interesting happens when you start making media that's not sensational or interpretive, but creative in nature, where your "audience" isn't just taking your creation in but using it to make something new. I'd ideally like to see a system which does this recursively, and which allows its users to create their own creative contexts for interaction, but the ones which exist like that are pretty ungainly and the tools for tracking them, like RSS, are primitive compared to the interactions that Facebook and Twitter allow for. I think there's something very positive about telling people they can control the nature of the media they consume, and even create that media themselves, and the more freedom they're given, the more interesting our media landscape becomes. But

n+1 isn't sophisticated enough to think thoughts like that. All evidence indicates they still think talking pictures are shocking and crude and artistically suspect.
posted by Rory Marinich at 7:02 AM on June 15, 2012 [5 favorites]


The downside of Twitter for me is the existence of an in-crowd. There are a few high-profile tweeters who seem to see themselves as a club or a group of prefects, and following more than one or two fills your timeline with namedrops and irrelevancies. And it can sometimes stifle debate.

Of course, you can avoid this just as you can people who a) talk about snacks b) take Twitter so seriously that they have a disclaimer on their bio page that a retweet 'is NOT endorsement of that person or opinion) c) hashtag banter. I'm not a big fan of spoof accounts, and trending topics are usually bunk, so it's easy to not get involved in them. I could follow one or two people who I find particularly irritating just to add a little pepper to my sugar, but my blood pressure tells me not to. It's just another tool.I don't use Facebook because ignoring the things I didn't like about it would mean actively offending people by not engaging with or being 'friends' with them, and that did not interest me. Twitter, being more streamlined, allows you to mostly avoid the things you don't like.
posted by mippy at 7:38 AM on June 15, 2012


There's no reason to ever use the phrase "epigrammatic impulse" it's not something you'd say when having a conversation, and it's not something that's easily read.

Blimey, you wouldn't like a conversation with me then. I can tend toward the prolix very easily. Which is ironic for someone who likes using a medium that rewards brevity over verbosity.
posted by mippy at 7:41 AM on June 15, 2012


"Retweeting" is what I don't understand about Twitter. More than anything else, that function seems to be used to rebroadcast posts from celebrities. I do not understand that impulse.

If half a million people want to subscribe to Rajon Rondo's Twitter page, so be it. It's public and anybody who wants to, can. But if you have subscribed, why in God's name would you think that those of us who haven't would want or need to see his updates? Why would you take it upon yourself to become his publicist, and why would you think that is socially okay? When you get junk mail or a fan-club email, presumably you don't forward that to all your friends. Why do it on Twitter?

The retweet function seems to turn Twitter into a spam machine.
posted by cribcage at 7:49 AM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


Retweet is better for links to interesting ideas. If a scientist or science jounalist links to some interesting page about, to take a recent example, the controversy around whether planetary boundaries is a good framework for managing human impacts on the environment, why wouldn't I want to retweet it? I'm telling my followers: this is interesting or important and you might want to know more.
posted by R343L at 7:52 AM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


I got about half way through this article before I just stopped. I really dislike the way it's written to the point that I don't even care what they're saying.
posted by royalsong at 7:54 AM on June 15, 2012


I retweet things that are funny and interesting. That's it.

I don't like the social networks as marketing thing - I know it happens and companies are very good at making it happen, but the majority of people I follow or engage with online do it because it's fun to chat with people, not to build a brand (I don't understand those people much as I don't understand those with wealth as an ambition). But it seems pretty prevalent now. I keep toying with going back to blogging, but since the days when my friends all used Livejournal as the easiest way to encounter interesting people and keep up to date, there's been a big rise in people using blogging almost as a second career- not blogs which are centred around reviewing products or writing about a certain area, but blogging about your life and your interests somehow turned into 'lifestyle bloggging'. There are a few blogs I follow who occasionally write about going to networking events about how to Build Your Brand and Monetise Your Voice and how to build good relationships with PRs and get free stuff for blogs that are not centred around reviewing products etc. normally. And I'm not interested in doing that at all. I don't want to chase popularity, I don't want to make money out of it, I'm not interested in being a persona of someone who likes the things I do. But I guess with Twitter and elsewhere a lot of people do/.
posted by mippy at 7:56 AM on June 15, 2012


"Retweeting" is what I don't understand about Twitter.

To quote Philip Sherburne, "Blogging about tweets to be re-blogged and re-tweeted is the new taking drugs to make music to take drugs to."
posted by octobersurprise at 8:02 AM on June 15, 2012


N+1 = Bukkake-orrheic.
posted by Skygazer at 8:14 AM on June 15, 2012


In his autobiography, B.B. King retweeted that about Lightnin' Hopkins.

Damn, you're right; I got them mixed up. Thanks!
posted by mhoye at 8:17 AM on June 15, 2012


why is mefi so hostile to n+1?

For much the same reason that MeFites can be so hostile to each other, apparently.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:20 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


Wow, this article is tedious. When they said tweets had to be shorter to be retweetable, I realized they don't actually use Twitter and I could ignore them.

I like my own curated Twitter feed, because I am reading the tweets of mostly friends, and some celebrities I think are funny or interesting, and a lot of literary journals (and @duotrope) so I can keep up with what they're up to and read lots of good writing (if you're looking for just one lit journal to check out, I suggest @pankmagazine). Articles like this seem to think we're all reading everybody's tweets, which would of course be a ridiculous and banal waste of time.

"Retweeting" is what I don't understand about Twitter.

I like retweeting to spread ideas or news (or less often, but I still do it, just funny comments). I retweet Margaret Atwood's political tweets occasionally, for example, not because I am promoting Margaret Atwood, who certainly doesn't need my help, but because I think The Latest Crazy Thing Harper's Done is important, and her pithy comment on it is insightful and better expressed than anything I would come up with, and a lot of my followers are Canadians who don't care for or about Atwood but do care about their country. Alternatively, I retweet some of @LordEdmundBryll because I think he's funny. I also retweet a lot of literary content, mostly links to short stories and poems I like.

I'm that person who is always pressing books on their friends, and making them listen to a song I've fallen in love with, so this is just the same impulse for me, except my friends can more easily ignore me if I'm being too obnoxious about it.

And hey this is a great thread for me to self-link to an interview that was posted yesterday about my twitter magazine.
posted by joannemerriam at 8:22 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


Sorry, had to check Twitter. What were we talking about?
posted by vibrotronica at 8:23 AM on June 15, 2012


I wonder why the ignorant and illiterate are so resentful of a large vocabulary.

People don't object to your big words, they object to your condescension.
posted by mhoye at 8:26 AM on June 15, 2012 [3 favorites]


My tip is: don't follow celebrities, first off. Follow your friends, or the things you're interested in (I follow a few bloggers and journalists whose work I like or who write abotu things I'm into). Look for the quirky. @sweden, for example, is an account wherte one new Swedish citizen gets to post every week. @gusthefox is a sweary fox. That kind of thing.
posted by mippy at 8:27 AM on June 15, 2012


My tip is: don't follow celebrities, first off.

The point is, retweeting puts celebrities into the feeds of people who aren't following celebrities.

Reading the other replies, it seems like maybe it's just a cultural thing. I like Facebook because it's personal: Within my circle of friends, my Facebook news feed consists of family photos, vacation anecdotes, work updates. It keeps me connected to my friends and family's lives. On the other hand, it seems like maybe Twitter is more for people who want to share external things. "I found this, it's funny." "This happened, it's important." Et cetera.

For me, great tweets would be posting a photo from the beach you're at, or praising a local restaurant where you are having lunch. If I want to know the latest thing Obama has done, I'll check CNN. I don't rely on my friends to keep me updated on politics or celebrity gossip or what not. I like to hear my friends tell me about themselves.
posted by cribcage at 8:41 AM on June 15, 2012


hurf durf Twitter hater.
posted by trunk muffins at 8:47 AM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


Pedantic derail: Vomitoriums have nothing to do with vomit.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:54 AM on June 15, 2012


I've so had it with people bitching about Twitter/Facebook etc. Do people really not understand that whatever you are seeing on these social networks is only what YOU are seeing because of the people YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO FOLLOW? People who complain about what they see in social networks are the same sad sacks who are constantly griping about how awful their friends are, yet for some reason keep hanging out with them. If the people you're choosing to follow on Twitter/Facebook etc. are annoying or depressing you, that sucks, but your inability to properly manage your experience of the Internet is not the fault of the Internet.
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 9:19 AM on June 15, 2012 [2 favorites]


It's an article about language, of course it has fanciful language in it. I enjoyed "blogorrheic" defined as "a fusion of the scrupulous and the garrulous."
posted by subdee at 9:23 AM on June 15, 2012


Twitter is for deciding where we're going for after-work drinks.
posted by Windigo at 9:25 AM on June 15, 2012


People who complain about what they see in social networks are the same sad sacks who are constantly griping about how awful their friends are, yet for some reason keep hanging out with them.

Whereas people who discuss their differing experiences with the same social groups across different social networks might be getting at something a bit deeper: Behavior can vary with venue.
posted by cribcage at 9:28 AM on June 15, 2012


I like Facebook because it's personal: Within my circle of friends, my Facebook news feed consists of family photos, vacation anecdotes, work updates. It keeps me connected to my friends and family's lives. On the other hand, it seems like maybe Twitter is more for people who want to share external things. "I found this, it's funny." "This happened, it's important." Et cetera.

Maybe? I use Twitter to share stuff I'm doing, too, but with the caveat that I know anybody can look at it (and since I'm an editor, a lot of people I don't know follow me), whereas Facebook for me is for more private stuff, with the caveat that I never post anything I'd be alarmed about having publicly available, because I don't trust them to adhere to their own privacy guidelines. I also use FB to share stuff I think is funny or important. Usually which platform I use to share something depends on where I found it. If I saw it on Twitter I'm sharing it on Twitter; if on FB, then on FB; and if somewhere else, then probably Twitter because I'm a little afraid of FB's already encyclopedic knowledge of me.
posted by joannemerriam at 9:36 AM on June 15, 2012


Vomitoria.
posted by XMLicious at 1:34 PM on June 15, 2012 [1 favorite]


My irritation towards N+1 is just a visceral reaction at this point.
posted by kettleoffish at 5:03 PM on June 16, 2012 [1 favorite]


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