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Post by BurlyBeaR on Mar 25, 2020 14:22:04 GMT
I’ve never been that keen but jeepers creepers it’s more annoying than ever. Two particular peeves..
People who post a meme or gif instead of typing a reply. Sometimes the whole thread is virtually all memes.
And who adopt twitterisms which you rarely see elsewhere or hear them used verbally. Examples:
Do better.
Actually (“I’m actually really offended by this” “it was really annoying actually”)
I “actually” think twitter has done more harm than good in its brief history. I suppose you could argue that it’s enabled information sharing to th3 masses but most of that information seems to be complete cobblers.
I’d ban it 🙂
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Post by lynette on Mar 25, 2020 16:17:56 GMT
It has helped people in small ways, lost stuff, birthday greetings, support for health stuff, which ‘Actually’ should not be underestimated. But the fake stuff, the celebrity showing off, the terrible language and more importantly the blatant anti semitism and racism that prowls there is depressing. As a tool for self promotion it must work or people wouldn’t use it. As a form of communication to the general public it fails 1. Because it is full of bs and 2 very few of the real public use it
Just now I have benefitted from one or two funny links that I would not have found myself and some info on shopping. But if I had the vote on whether to save or ban, I would also ban.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 25, 2020 17:01:43 GMT
I wouldn't ban Twitter. What I would ban is news outlets reporting 'someone said something on twitter' as if it was real news.
Including if that someone is Donald Trump.
I reckon if the official news outlet payed less attention to social media it would pretty swiftly go back to being funny cat videos and people posting about what they had for breakfast. It's a minority of the population who actually use Twitter, the reason why it has so much influence is because that minority includes everyone who works in the mainstream media.
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Post by lynette on Mar 25, 2020 19:35:27 GMT
I wouldn't ban Twitter. What I would ban is news outlets reporting 'someone said something on twitter' as if it was real news. Including if that someone is Donald Trump. I reckon if the official news outlet payed less attention to social media it would pretty swiftly go back to being funny cat videos and people posting about what they had for breakfast. It's a minority of the population who actually use Twitter, the reason why it has so much influence is because that minority includes everyone who works in the mainstream media. It really is for the ‘listen to me, listen to me’ brigade. |
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Post by longinthetooth on Mar 25, 2020 19:44:23 GMT
I'm the opposite, I love Twitter. I have less than 200 followers and am choosy about who I follow, and many of them are friends. I find the celebrity, and in fact, everybody showing off is far worse on Instagram, with all the nobodies thinking they are somebody, and that the world is interested in what they had for breakfast. Wild horses wouldn't get me on there. I find it easy to avoid the rubbish on Twitter by just not reading it!
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Post by intoanewlife on Mar 25, 2020 20:00:18 GMT
Twitter and Instagram are the biggest cesspools on earth. They literally breed narcissists x
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Post by londonpostie on Mar 25, 2020 20:16:21 GMT
I find it invaluable and also horribly abused by anon idiots. I say that as someone who cannot bear the BBC anymore.
Takes on going honing and curating; top level think tanks, serious commentators, academic/specialists - you can really get a rounded view on issues.
Is there a downside to making everyone use their real name (photo ID whatever)? |
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4,029 posts
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Post by Dawnstar on Mar 25, 2020 22:01:40 GMT
For the last 24 hours I haven't even been able to persuade Twitter to give me tweets in the right time order & going back more than a couple of hours. I can't decide if I'm fed up with the content if I can't even read them!
But I would say in general that ever since the Brexit referendum Twitter has been pretty awful. I have so many words & phrases muted to try to be able to read the theatre stuff I want to see without the politics stuff that I don't.
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Post by daisy24601 on Mar 25, 2020 22:41:58 GMT
I’ve never been that keen but jeepers creepers it’s more annoying than ever. Two particular peeves.. People who post a meme or gif instead of typing a reply. Sometimes the whole thread is virtually all memes. And who adopt twitterisms which you rarely see elsewhere or hear them used verbally. Examples: Do better. Actually (“I’m actually really offended by this” “it was really annoying actually”) I “actually” think twitter has done more harm than good in its brief history. I suppose you could argue that it’s enabled information sharing to th3 masses but most of that information seems to be complete cobblers. I’d ban it 🙂 I just thought about how annoying "Do better" is in the last 5 minutes then I see your post 😄 "I was today years old..." is my new annoyance. I enjoy Twitter but like anything of its magnitude, it has it's good and bad sides. Lots of people using it as a platform to say all their racist, abusive remarks incognito and to bully others. I try to avoid all that and be careful about who I follow and what I read. It can be delightfully funny and interesting, I've also kept in touch with many people through it. |
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Mar 26, 2020 2:46:17 GMT
I’d like it if industry people who get drunk at press nights and loudly slag off my playwright mates as untalented hacks who don’t deserve their success would stop tweeting about how those same mates are the most amazing writers slash geniuses and should win 1000 Oliviers and be made President of Earth.
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Post by ukpuppetboy on Mar 26, 2020 4:49:49 GMT
Twitter is only as inspiring (or vile) as the people you follow so if you’re finding it offensive or irritating then it sounds like you need to cull that list. For the most part I really enjoy going through my feed & choose not to pay trolls & narcissists any mind. I’m not a fan of blocking people with different political views, but also not into engaging with them either. It’s easily my most used social media platform (having all but abandoned Facebook and Instagram these days).
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Post by 49thand8th on Mar 26, 2020 5:03:27 GMT
I'm the opposite, I love Twitter. I have less than 200 followers and am choosy about who I follow, and many of them are friends. I find the celebrity, and in fact, everybody showing off is far worse on Instagram, with all the nobodies thinking they are somebody, and that the world is interested in what they had for breakfast. Wild horses wouldn't get me on there. I find it easy to avoid the rubbish on Twitter by just not reading it! Yeah, I find a lot of people who complain about a particular experience on a social media platform are ones who do "obligation" follows. (Not saying this is you, OP.) A social media feed is something of your own making. If someone you're friends with IRL is fun IRL but annoying on twitter, you don't have to follow them. Constant gif-replying is incredibly annoying. Trite jokes repeated ad nauseam is annoying. I've been on Twitter since 2007. I mute people and move on. It's fine. The thing I find most annoying that I can't always let go are tweeted screencaps of interesting or crucial news stories without a LINK to that story. Sometimes it's true negligence; sometimes it's just a mentality of "everyone else is talking about this story right now, so why bother"? (I see this a lot on theater twitter.) No! Just include a link! It makes tracking things down 400% easier. |
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Post by showgirl on Mar 26, 2020 5:29:54 GMT
I like Twitter though am another with few followers and zero interest in celebs. It can be invaluable for obtaining a response to a simple enquiry, eg play running time, though some organisations seem not even to monitor their account, let alone respond to enquiries.
Twitter is very annoying when it repeatedly suggests "Who to follow" or has a rash of showing me what others have liked, but that comes in phases and I simply go through the "likes" saying I'm not interested - since there's no option to say "Stop messing around with my feed"!
The "Turn off retweets" option is also essential as sometimes I follow a new account - eg a theatre producer - only to find that the owner then retweets frequently comments from others about issues I don't want in my timeline, eg their political views.
In the worst cases I follow someone, only to have to unfollow them again within hours as they tweet so frequently and about matters which to me are tripe.
I've even unfollowed some theatre accounts since the current crisis started as alas they were forever banging on about what they were doing, how audiences could still watch productions online their plans for the future, funding requests, etc. Yes, I understand that they want to remain in the public eye and reach their absent audience but shut up already!
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Mar 26, 2020 8:03:41 GMT
Twitter is very annoying when it repeatedly suggests "Who to follow" or has a rash of showing me what others have liked, but that comes in phases and I simply go through the "likes" saying I'm not interested - since there's no option to say "Stop messing around with my feed"! Oh you can! Click on the blue star at the top right of your feed and change it from “top tweets” to “show latest tweets.” That will show you only tweets by people you follow in chronological order, not likes or anything else. |
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Post by duncan on Mar 26, 2020 9:18:32 GMT
The December election and the current incident have certainly allowed me to expand my list of blocked words and posters on Twitter.
If I see people popping into my timeline with hate speech then its a bye bye to them and by blocking specific words and phrases like Election, Corbyn, Tory, Brexit etc you can help to filter what you actually see.
...and my big bugbear is people who have accounts seemingly simply to retweet things, no original thoughts or insight. That seems odd.
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Post by londonpostie on Mar 26, 2020 9:36:13 GMT
...and my big bugbear is people who have accounts seemingly simply to retweet things, no original thoughts or insight. That seems odd. Bots. |
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Post by Forrest on Mar 26, 2020 9:57:35 GMT
I have a sort of a love-hate relationship with Twitter.
I joined in 2015 but didn't use it until 2019 (I believe I tweeted one salad recipe in that period to someone who asked, after my brother in law complimented a salad I'd made on Twitter, for reasons known only to him, really!), when I revived the account quite by accident, because I really wanted to shout out about something, but writing it on my usual platforms (Instagram, Facebook) didn't make any sense, since nobody would have known what I was on about anyway. (Yes, it was theatre related!)
To me, it sometimes feels like a space in which many people post only to 'hear' the sound of their own voice. It is supposed to help us exchange information, but a lot of it is just 'white noise' of people's random thoughts and (often unnecessary) insights into private lives. It also feels a bit hostile at times. I have the feeling that many (from all sides of political/value spectrums) just wait for the opportunity to trash someone's opposing opinion to prove how 'woke' or 'right' they are. It can also feel a bit exclusive (in terms of feeling as if you're looking in on someone else's party): I have 73 followers (at the time of writing) and sometimes I feel like I can post anything because it won't reach anyone anyway. Which is both a bit funny and a bit alienating. It also somehow feels like you are supposed to be 'branding' yourself on there: as the same brother in law always tells me - you need to 'sell' your content to people - and that makes me slightly uncomfortable. (I don't want to feel like I am 'pitching' my writing to people. I want people who share my enthusiasm to read it for the honesty of it, if they like, and skip if they don't.)
But I have to give it credit for the fact that it does allow us to immediately reach out to people we might need for any reason (if they use it, of course). In that respect, it has truly made the world 'smaller'. I've also met a particularly dear friend through it: my now-friend saw my tweet about a play we'd both seen, registered on Twitter just to be able to discuss it with me(!), and once I'd moved to the UK we took that friendship from the virtual into the 'real' domain - which makes it kind of dear to me, although I know that's a bit biased. It has also connected me with some other, truly wonderful people.
Like most other things in life, it has its good and bad sides.
(And, yes, I am also against this newly discovered media craze of turning Twitter ramblings into 'news'.)
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Post by crowblack on Mar 26, 2020 10:15:37 GMT
...and my big bugbear is people who have accounts seemingly simply to retweet things, no original thoughts or insight. That seems odd. No, I do this a lot now - I use it as an online scrapbook for me, like newspaper cuttings. I don't tweet opinions/thoughts much myself anymore because, particularly as a woman, you can quite quickly get hostile responses and I just can't be arsed emotionally with the nastiness and endless notifications you get, plus I use my real name which is probably daft of me (maybe I should set up a made-up-name account for more freedom). I do tweet support for a great play, book, performance etc. if it's something that I feel isn't getting the publicity it deserves or if other people on Twitter are being unreasonably nasty about it. I rarely Tweet negative stuff (much as I'd like to sometimes!) because I know programme-makers, actors (and their families!) etc. look up their names, and it must be hurtful. |
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Post by CG on the loose on Mar 26, 2020 10:56:36 GMT
I'm a fan... I choose the accounts I follow with care (usually check their feed first to see if they're likely to annoy me!) and fill my feed with things that make me happy. Mostly theatre chat (RTs muted for those venue accounts who RT every mention), photographers and real-life friends. Works for me  |
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Post by showgirl on Mar 26, 2020 12:03:30 GMT
Twitter is very annoying when it repeatedly suggests "Who to follow" or has a rash of showing me what others have liked, but that comes in phases and I simply go through the "likes" saying I'm not interested - since there's no option to say "Stop messing around with my feed"! Oh you can! Click on the blue star at the top right of your feed and change it from “top tweets” to “show latest tweets.” That will show you only tweets by people you follow in chronological order, not likes or anything else. Oh I do that already, but it doesn't seem to stop Twitter interrupting or trying to change my preferences. |
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Post by Jon on Mar 26, 2020 13:00:35 GMT
I'm the opposite, I love Twitter. I have less than 200 followers and am choosy about who I follow, and many of them are friends. I find the celebrity, and in fact, everybody showing off is far worse on Instagram, with all the nobodies thinking they are somebody, and that the world is interested in what they had for breakfast. Wild horses wouldn't get me on there. I find it easy to avoid the rubbish on Twitter by just not reading it! Yeah, I find a lot of people who complain about a particular experience on a social media platform are ones who do "obligation" follows. (Not saying this is you, OP.) A social media feed is something of your own making. If someone you're friends with IRL is fun IRL but annoying on twitter, you don't have to follow them. Constant gif-replying is incredibly annoying. Trite jokes repeated ad nauseam is annoying. I've been on Twitter since 2007. I mute people and move on. It's fine. The thing I find most annoying that I can't always let go are tweeted screencaps of interesting or crucial news stories without a LINK to that story. Sometimes it's true negligence; sometimes it's just a mentality of "everyone else is talking about this story right now, so why bother"? (I see this a lot on theater twitter.) No! Just include a link! It makes tracking things down 400% easier. I hate people who complain to companies via Twitter especially if they put the dot in front of the @ so everyone in their feed can see it. |
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Post by kathryn on Mar 26, 2020 13:24:23 GMT
I enjoy Twitter as a source of information, jokes and random conversation. My twitter account is anon, so I feel reasonably safe in engaging randoms - and am utterly ruthless with muting and blocking. I don’t do obligation follow-backs. I follow institutions, companies, people, special-topic accounts (I’m enjoying one about women artists at the moment) celebs, etc.
I will look at hashtags and search things I’m interested in and jump in to conversations.
I also enjoy noticing the patterns - trending topics are often generated by a relatively small number of people who have coordinated a campaign, and certain times of day when Twitter is quiet you only need a few thousand tweets using a keyword for it to trend. Bot networks are kind of fascinating - I do not know why someone has set up a bot to tweet that Eminem performed with Elton John at the 2001 Grammys, but it’s there, because the exact same tweet about it appears regularly from a variety of different accounts as if they were real people. It’ll probably still be doing it when we’re all long gone, and will be interpreted as a form of ritual by future techno-archaeologists.....
But the really important thing with Twitter is to turn it off when it’s annoying you!
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Post by 49thand8th on Mar 26, 2020 14:48:37 GMT
...and my big bugbear is people who have accounts seemingly simply to retweet things, no original thoughts or insight. That seems odd. Bots. A longtime online friend (we're talking late '90s message boards) does this ALL the time. She's 100% a real person because she replies to me on occasion. But if you just look at her feed sans replies, you would think she never had an original thought. |
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Post by 49thand8th on Mar 26, 2020 14:50:00 GMT
Yeah, I find a lot of people who complain about a particular experience on a social media platform are ones who do "obligation" follows. (Not saying this is you, OP.) A social media feed is something of your own making. If someone you're friends with IRL is fun IRL but annoying on twitter, you don't have to follow them. Constant gif-replying is incredibly annoying. Trite jokes repeated ad nauseam is annoying. I've been on Twitter since 2007. I mute people and move on. It's fine. The thing I find most annoying that I can't always let go are tweeted screencaps of interesting or crucial news stories without a LINK to that story. Sometimes it's true negligence; sometimes it's just a mentality of "everyone else is talking about this story right now, so why bother"? (I see this a lot on theater twitter.) No! Just include a link! It makes tracking things down 400% easier. I hate people who complain to companies via Twitter especially if they put the dot in front of the @ so everyone in their feed can see it. For what it's worth, sometimes the social media team of an airline can get something done for you faster than if you called or even went to an airport help desk. This has happened to me on a few occasions. But yeah, putting the . before the @ to make sure EVERYONE sees it requires careful consideration, which not a lot of people bother with. |
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Post by kathryn on Mar 26, 2020 17:42:03 GMT
Putting the . before the handle ensures your followers will see it. People do it because they know they will get a faster response if the company wants to avoid the bad publicity of a service failure going viral.
It does often work. If a company is doing a really bad job their social media team will be getting lots of complaints so will prioritise the really visible ones. I would reserve it for when attempts to fix things more quietly have already failed though.
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