I’ve tried signing off twitter for the last 3 days and I think I might as well keep it up.

- a large part of my feed is indeed righteous anger about cops and racism; I can’t argue with this, except that like… twitter has an incentive to keep us all maximally angry, because clicks.

(an interesting side note: I think from this recent deconstructing yourself episode, I’ve been trying to notice the difference between feelings that are pleasant, and feelings that just want more of themselves. anger is maybe the #1 of the latter. you feel so angry and then like - “but I want to keep feeling angry!” but you don’t. a more skilled blogger, or meditator, than I could turn this into a whole post.)

- a big chunk right now is about slate star codex shutting down. this whole thing makes me sad. I love the shit out of this blog, most of the time. great stuff about like antidepressants and AI and brain things and whatever; solid creation of memes ("moloch" and “slack” have found their way right into my lexicon, for example); the occasional rambling about something maybe he’s not qualified to comment on; this rollicking great fiction book. I dislike a lot of its followers. but I like a lot of its followers too. one thing that makes me sad is that somehow it’s become positioned “against social justice warriors” - or maybe people who talk about it say that they’re against social justice warriors. which like – I kinda don’t like some parts of social justice warrioring, but I really don’t like people who go out of their way to be explicitly “against social justice warriors.” we should all probably be sjws, like jesus and buddha and mr. rogers. sometimes an internet mob or real mob focuses on the wrong things. “sjws” is such a motte-and-bailey.

- some of it is the usual reminders that things that are bad: SF is bad at housing, every US city is bad at cars/bikes/humans, the US federal government is bad at everything right now but especially managing the pandemic

- a small bit is good jokes and comics! that used to be a big bit!

- some of it is neat computational-art things that it’s cool to get inspired by. more of it is computational-art things that don’t really inspire me, but that’s art, I guess.

- another small bit is people I know, some of whom I can keep in touch with in a pretty low-contact way with a toot here or there, and that’s pretty nice.

- another small bit is people I met once and will probably never talk to again but haven’t unfollowed, :shrug:

most of this I kind of hate and maybe I should quit this. buuut, I’m often desperate for any kind of social interaction these days. maybe I should … start a discord? I don’t know, man - but large-yet-private places have been so much more rewarding than internet-scale public places. start a newsletter? heck, that’s just like this. convince all my friends to join mastodon? I mean, yes, obviously; still follow me at @dantasse@mastodon.cloud.

I don’t know, I’m still undecided, but getting rid of one of my dopamine slot machines seems healthy, anyway. next up, reddit?

Comments:

Adam Jaffe - Jun 4, 2020

I’m actually somewhat surprised you’re not a redditor already. Of course reddit is a giant cesspool, but there are certain subreddits which are actually very good and have led to pleasant in-person Meetups (like the r/Atlanta group).

Dan - Jun 4, 2020

oh yeah nah I am a redditor (and have so far mostly avoided it becoming an outrage feed) - the thing I’m wondering is, should I quit that too :-P

Daniel - Jun 4, 2020

How often / how do you check mastodon? Maybe I can set it to send me emails, so I can gradually ramp up on it…

Dan - Jun 4, 2020

I just go to mastodon.cloud instead of twitter.com. but I don’t do it as much because there’s fewer people so less consistent intermittent dopamine drip. indeed it looks like you can set email notifications - at least here’s how it looks on mastodon.cloud.