I’m not sure how I feel about not seeing follower counts or real-time feedback on this site, mostly because it’s making me wonder about Deep Things such as, how much has metric-driven posting impacted my personality, the way I interact with others, the things I choose to say, so on.

I have/had just enough followers on Twitter that I feel like I began curating my posts, and how I interact with others, based off the fact that an entire small town of people would be exposed to whatever I say. And, although the internet is generally impersonal, and I’m generally completely capable of handling ribbing and criticism, it’s different when it comes from like 7000 different places at once. As much as I would like to believe that my real personality hasn’t been shaped and reconstituted in the Flames Of Twitter Shitposts, I am fully aware that it has been to an extent.

Anyway, I guess that I’m wondering what kinds of things I’ll begin posting over time, when I don’t have a constant measurable metric (likes, rts, ratio) driving my future behaviour. I don’t think metric-driven posting is bad per-se, but I think it has impacted who I am over the years. I wonder how dropping the metrics will, like, change me?


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in reply to @barrelshifter's post:

been mulling this too and I think I feel good about it? Twitter is a really effective machine for inducing the “do y’all like this? no? okay I will try something else” mindset and I like the prospect of… not that.

gosssh, it really is hard not to fall into a pattern of people pleasing when you are so aware of the exact kind of ways the things you make please people

it really does just kinda quash the more personal and interesting parts of what can make such ubiquitous human interaction worthwhile