One of the best parts of Twitter is that it can give random people a voice and connect then with people who are often hard to get to otherwise. One of the worst parts of Twitter is that can give random people a voice and connect then with people who are often hard to get to otherwise.
As someone without a Twitter account, I miss out on a huge amount of conversation that IMHO can add productive and interesting insights to, even though I’m not well-known like the participants might be. With time, they might come to know me as well, something which is basically impossible outside of the platform. I have heard that it is also a great place to find jobs or the right people through “the Twitter network” where people are known for what they tend to be good at and people can point you around to where you need to be.
On the other hand, having the ability to get random people to interact with you is basically inviting harassment and polarization. The very benefit I just mentioned of having a “personality” in Twitter which people see you as means that you’ll always be dragged into any conflict along those lines, and anything you say has the potential to blow up in a bad way.
I, from outside the platform, have a much harder time getting any of those benefits I mentioned: fewer people read or look at my stuff, I think, since I publish it elsewhere; I have hundreds of things I leave unsaid because I can’t interact with the platform besides observe it; getting in contact with people who share my interests is much more difficult because I’m often cold emailing them or collaborating with them on something before they know me. I don’t get to know about interesting work opportunities very often. But on the flip side, I don’t get dragged into pointless arguments, at least on that platform, so I guess I’ve just been making that tradeoff ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
