The problem with Twitter | PirateSoftware Clips

Thor's hidden third agenda for Shorts: causing massive psychic damage to the unsuspecting.

I would argue that it IS inherently caused by Twitter. Here's why I say this: When Twitter first came into existence it was during the time of blogging, where people would just write shit and describe their day and/or things that were going on in their life. Basically a diary or journal that everyone could read and (depending on the platform) comment on/interact with in some capacity. Twitter was exactly this but extremely short-form and it went out of its way to encourage people to put out these microblogs and interact with said microblogs. I remember in the early days of this where the running joke was people tweeting about every step/aspect of their day. Wake up? Gotta tweet. Make breakfast? Gotta tweet that. Going to work? Tweet that out. Gotta take a shit? Oh, you best be sure that's gonna be a tweet! This formed the building-blocks of what the culture of Twitter was. It created the expectation that folks were a part of this other person's life (and that this person, in turn, had a bunch of people always watching them with limitless attention). While Twitter has certainly evolved and grown beyond that by this point, that whole idea of "you have to be a part of a thing -> why aren't you part of this thing?" is still very much the core of what it is to be on Twitter. With regards to the short-form content aspect, I agree that this is a huge facet and has certainly made things objectively worse in that regards. However, short-form content alone doesn't create the meme "I like waffles -> so you hate pancakes, then?". Make no mistake it makes it really REALLY easy to take those logical leaps due to the severely truncated nature of short-form content, but I see that as being more of a facilitator and accelerant.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” - C.S. Lewis

Twitter and Tiktok both have very short character limits for comments/replies. Whereas YouTube does not have a character limit. So yeah... it makes sense.

with the whole "too long didn't read" thing, i feel like that's a symptom of the internet as a whole i've seen youtube comments which had replies saying "wow that's a long comment" when it was 4 or 5 lines long, which to me is completely ridiculous, i've made probably dozens of comments approaching three digit line numbers for various things, and i happily read them as well, it's just the attention span thing all over again

in the philippines theres a thing called "mema" short for "memasabi lang / may masabi lang". in english its roughly "say something, anything, just so it looks like you are part of the thing or you know something about it". its general origin is from gossiping + the fear of missing out. it is stronger in social media that are text based cause its faster and keyboard typing makes one say things s/he wouldnt say with his/her mouth. theres also the aspect of people jumping unto trends so they feel that they are cool. so thats "mema" + fomo + jumping to trends + wanting to look cool

Tribalism + Miscommunication

I think its because for the last 15 years, people having been saying that if you're silent, then your agreeing/complacent with the [bad] thing. Whatever that thing is.

For me, I treat Shorts as a quick way to "demo" a youtube channel. If I like someone's short, I check out their channel. It's basically a series of commercials to me.

Low self esteem is also a driver for "I need to be a part of this", as well as "lowering others' status elevates my status". Social media helps amplify this, since everyone is watching, all the time. It's always recess on the playground, with everyone vying for attention. Being a part of "the event" is a connection to your friend group, as well as a status symbol ("I was there, man; I was part of it."). Being "the event" yourself is an even higher status symbol, which is likely why it's trends on TikTok: "I like that person's clip, so I'm going to make one like it, and hopefully people will share mine too." And even if theirs is the most popular, you still get bonus points if you were an early joiner on a trend. Social media amplifies in/out groups, both by its immediacy, as well as its multiple new categories of groups; and from what you've observed, it seems the more short-form, the more amplification.

Youtube shorts seem to be fine specifically because the platform is so much worse at shortform than others. Everyone comes here for longform content; usually analysis, dissection, and dissertation, from what I've seen, and the shortform content is either just a brief reprieve from that, with cute soft things or comedy, or advertises and actively encourages you to watch the longform content. Youtube's shortform content is either ads or fluff, and not much else, which is greatly different from the other platforms, as they have no other forms of content besides the shortform, being their major "selling" point.

In art history we talked about "the other" a lot. An exotic rug becomes exotic because you assign value to it based on the "other". The other is a different group or even an individual that is not you and you make choices based on the differences between you and them. One of the choices people make about the "other" is to ensure that they are not them. It's sort of a way to protect the sense of self among other things. People develop an attachment to their favorite streamers and then anyone who isn't also that interested becomes part of the "other". And one way to protect yourself from "infiltrations" or "corruption" is to invest in a leader. The more invested you feel the more protected you feel.

This is why I prefer 10 minutes video format like this one. You actually have enough « room » to put a reasonable amount of context.

"Pay to Nuance" is such a revealing concept! Yeah, it's funny how TikTok coagulated into the big chaotic mess that it is. I think most of the folks who liked to make dance and music videos on Vine ended up migrating to TikTok. But the creators who liked making comedic shorts on Vine migrated to YTshorts.

I also think a huge contributor is the fact that social media algorithms usually respond to interactions regardless of whether they're positive or negative. It doesn't matter whether you make a good impression or whether people like/agree with what you have to say, if they interact with it, you benefit. Therefore, if you want to grow your influence/following, all that matters is "being part of" as many high-traffic conversations as possible. Users are trained to value saying something over adding value to a conversation.

"Short Content" can't be fixed that easily, because even if it was longer content, people would just selectively hear what they want to hear, and ignore the context. Look how many articles are written in the news with misleading headlines where if you read the context, you get that the headlines is out of context on purpose to mislead people and get clicks. Then if you look at the comments it's obvious 90% of people didn't read the article, or did read it and ignored the full picture. they mentally twisted the story, on purpose to be hateful.

we need to bring back calling people fucking idiots and not getting banned for it

"It helps no one to be reductive." - Xavier, Renegade Angel

This is the reason I exclusively use YouTube for social media. It's long enough for context, but still more engaging than a straight up article.

If I'm not mistaken, that phenomenon is called "context collapse".