Twitter Memes
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James Joyner | Monday, October 26, 2009 |
Becks observes, “I suspect many Twitter memes that I find annoying (one letter off movie titles, failed children’s books, etc.) would have been quite hilarious Unfogged threads.”
The post title, “The Medium Is The Message,” is appropriate. Several Twitter memes (created by adding a hashtag such as #failedchildrensbooks) of the sort mentioned can be amusing if one is in the mood. The problem is that one gets a huge stream of them from participating people one is following whether one is in the mood or not. If the latter, then it becomes clutter — if not spam — impeding one’s efforts to glean the sort of information usually imparted by those one follows. Conversely, a comment discussion on a one-off blog post can be — and generally is — simply skipped over by those not in the mood and once can easily stop reading once one tires of it.
On a related note, the equivalent phenomenon — the widespread adoption of silly applications — has killed Facebook for me. Once invitations to participate in zombie wars start to outnumber useful messages from friends and others in my network, it ceases to be worth the time.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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impeding one’s efforts to glean the sort of information usually imparted by those one follows
Just stop following the person.
Just stop following the person.
Good Twitterers get caught up in these things from time-to-time. Hell, I've done one or two of these. They're fine for those of your community who are participating. But they do suck if you're just trying to get quick news tips and the like.
Maybe a link to Becks is in order?
(Me, I quit reading Unfogged when Ogged quit posting ... it was always too much time-suckage anyway to catch up on a 300-comment thread. Becks is one of the good ones however.)
Maybe a link to Becks is in order?
Fixed. Was there but the image screwed it up, splitting the start and close tag.
(Me, I quit reading Unfogged when Ogged quit posting ... it was always too much time-suckage anyway to catch up on a 300-comment thread. Becks is one of the good ones however.)
I generally just skim the posts and read the comments on when I really, really want to.
The Facebook problem is actually a fairly easy fix: You can block a lot of crap (either as they come in or with a pretty broad, but blunt, set of account settings options) with very little effort. I hardly see any of the major apps any more.
The Facebook problem is actually a fairly easy fix: You can block a lot of crap (either as they come in or with a pretty broad, but blunt, set of account settings options) with very little effort. I hardly see any of the major apps any more.
That's good to know. It wasn't the case several months back and I largely gave up trying.
