- It’s superficial. Surfaces are beautiful and necessary, especially to us primates with our extreme reliance on vision.
- Chaucer Doth Tweet.
Yn Norse mythologye, the realme of thos wyth a persistent cold ys yclept Sniflheim.
— Chaucer Doth Tweet (@LeVostreGC) November 2, 2013
- Enforced concision has a way of sorting the sheep from the goats where writers and humorists are concerned.
- BluegrassPoet.
Inside a tangle of morning glory vines, a small bird's nest built on a foundation of plastic bag.
— BluegrassPoet (@BluegrassPoet) October 20, 2013
- tinywords.
cowlick
some part of me
still wild -Annette Makino http://t.co/jNbVTj1H5W— tinywords (@tinywords) September 17, 2013
- Tweeting is like back-to-basics blogging: it’s far less about self-promotion than about sharing links and insights.
- Teju Cole.
Unused language at day's end we put in little sandwich bags and leave on the stoop for the poor: ad execs, lawyers, politicians.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) October 5, 2013
- People with mobile phones who can’t otherwise access the web, whether because they’re poor or live in places without wifi, can still enlarge their world.
- Bill (of St. Louis)
Oh, the neighbors have been nice enough, in life, but there's no room in their cemetery when we die.
— Bill Knight (@i_cant_look) August 24, 2013
- 80% fewer selfies than Instagram.
- KimKierkegaardashian.
Want that perfect pout? Form your lips such that when the sigh of deep and hidden anguish passes through them, it sounds like music.
— Kim Kierkegaardashian (@KimKierkegaard) September 30, 2013
- Kenneth Goldsmith.
https://twitter.com/kg_ubu/status/395027417900658688 - Privacy settings are straight-forward: your tweets are either public or they’re protected. If the latter, no one sees them but those whom you approve.
- Maciej Ceglowski.
Some of my unborn children are insufferable teenagers by now. "I didn't ask to be born!" And so you weren't, you little shit.
— Maciej Ceglowski (@baconmeteor) May 13, 2013
- Deeply serious people still just don’t see the point of it.
- Eileen Myles.
In every house electric bells were installed. Domestic life stood under the sign of galvanism.
— Eileen Myles (@EileenMyles) November 4, 2013
- Florida Man.
Florida Man Calls 911 to Report Invisible Lizard in Toilet | http://t.co/EKnmQYINOJ
— Florida Man (@_FloridaMan) October 25, 2013
- You can be yourself, which is to say, anybody or anything you want — no real name required or even particularly encouraged.
- Magda Kapa.
You can tell who have been dancing for a while together not by their dance steps but by the way they stop and leave in the middle of a song.
— Magda Kapa (@MagdaKapa) October 28, 2013
- Samuel Pepys.
Much company I found to come to Mrs. Pearse, and cannot wonder at it, for she is very pretty and wanton.
— Samuel Pepys (@samuelpepys) November 4, 2013
- Hitting the Enter key by mistake doesn’t publish your update.
- p tat.
The wild asylum of the rain.
— p tat (@anitarust) June 17, 2013
- As a corporation, Twitter is more zealous about protecting its users’ data than either Facebook or Google. They also seem to take free speech seriously, while responding to legitimate complaints about hate speech.
- God.
I've said it before and I'll say it again until you truly understand: I made you in My image, and I'm an asshole.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) November 4, 2013
- Somewhat less unwanted crap (“promoted tweets”) in one’s feed than with Facebook.
- George Szirtes.
Street furniture plays a major role in the plot of The Book of Corrugated Iron. The trouble is things keep crawling away and weeping.
— George Szirtes (@george_szirtes) October 2, 2013
- Hilariously absurd pronouncements by self-appointed social media experts on how to use Twitter.
- Sparrow.
Overheard on the Subway
"Since I kicked heroin, I suddenly love orchids."
— Sparrow (@Sparrow14) September 20, 2013
- Wittiness is rewarded. Self-importance is mocked.
- 3rdhouse.
https://twitter.com/3rdhouse/status/396979754319880192 - Ryokan.
I don't regard my life
as insufficient.
Inside the brushwood gate
there is a moon;
there are flowers.— Ryokan (@RyokanTweets) June 19, 2013
- I can embed a bunch of tweets in a blog post and call it a day.
Of course, you can also follow Via Negativa on Twitter. And me. And Luisa.
And yes, I could write a companion post on reasons not to use Twitter. But that would be too easy.
How do you feel about the forced images in the Twitter feed?
I don’t see ’em on my mobile device, which is good. But do on my laptop, which is a drag.
Yeah, that’s a real pain in the ass. Clearly, Twitter is preparing for its IPO, and needs to show a willingness to sacrifice utility on the altar of greed.
Good choices, Dave. Thing is, once some of these folks would have been a good reason to follow blogs. But I don’t mean to carp: I like Twitter.
Yeah, I’ve had that same thought. It will be interesting if they eventually add the option to write longer posts, and 140 characters becomes simply an excerpt from an expandable post. At that point it will be very much like a blog aggregator.
And I really, really like Sparrow. Have known of him since the Whole Earth days; Soft Skull published at least one book of his work too.
Oh yes. I seem to recall reading his stuff in The Sun some 20 years ago.