this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Frankly I'm happy Mastodon didn't become the leader in the fediverse. My main paint point with twitter was how the character limit really stifled long form discussion. Much more nuanced, complex conversations can be held here since we're not chained to 250 characters.
Both can peacefully co-exist. There's a market for folks who like micro blogging and a market for deeper reddit style discussions. Them being able to talk to each other is a bonus.
I always thought the original idea of witter was to share an interesting link with a headline. You know, like this:
Pi-hole FTL v5.23, Web v5.20 and Core v5.17 released https://pi-hole.net/blog/2023/05/28/pi-hole-ftl-v5-23-web-v5-20-and-core-v5-17-released/
If you’re trying to have a meaningful conversation about the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, it’s going to feel very awkward trying post your ideas one sentence at a time.
The problem is not all conversations are either sharing an interesting link or deep conversations about life, the universe, and everything. What if I just want to give my opinion on a pie recipe I liked, but want to say more than "damn that shit was good!". Twitter stifles all forms of conversation, it's a site dedicated to one liners and quips. Even what I'm saying now is more than 250 characters.
@Hamartiogonic @SenatorBumCuckets
Interesting, I'm actually thinking that the character limit forces the user to put certain thoughts and pieces into paragraphs.
It becomes easier to interact with, e.g. disagreeing with opinions expressed in *one* easily linked to piece of the whole, as having to "disagree with *some unspecified* parts of a monolithic text".
But I do understand that people don't like to be... Aggressively encouraged to be brief.
Have you noticed that when children try to explain something mundane, they end up rambling on on using lots and lots of simple words, even though you could have said the same thing in a single sentence? Well, that’s because children aren’t that experienced in concise expression. Adults face the same situation when discussing more complex subjects on Twitter. An experienced writer could be able to squeeze complex ideas into a single tweet, but normal people just can’t without making some serious compromises. You could cut the story short and risk being misunderstood or split the idea it into 42 separate tweets.
Even if you manage to find the most concise expression, it might also be so obscure and antiquated, that the other people just wouldn’t understand it. Seems like the limitations of Twitter make it very difficult to discuss complex topics such as climate change, immigration, religion, ethics, politics etc. without starting WW3 while you’re at it.
Alternatively, you could always include a bunch of disclaimers with all of your comments just to point out that you’re actually only saying about 10% of what you actually believe.
BTW I support solar power (with many caveats), nuclear power has its downsides (even more asterisks here), and I use a paper filter when making coffee (super complicated topic).