It’s happened to me too: I’m angry, or upset, or excited about something. I go on Twitter. I’ve got stuff to say. It’s more than will fit in the 140-character limit, but I don’t have the time or energy to write a blog post. So I just write a tweet. And then another, and another.
I?ve seen other people doing this, and I?m fine with it. But for a while now I’ve seen people doing something more planned, numbering their tweets. Many people try to predict how many tweets are going to be in a particular rant, and often fail spectacularly along the lines of Monty Python’ Spanish Inquisition sketch. Some people are clearly composing the whole thing ahead of time, as a unit. Sometimes they?re not even excited, just telling a story. It’s developing into a genre: the tweetstorm.
I get why people are reluctant to blog in these cases. If you?re already in Twitter and you want to write something longer, you have to switch to a different window, maybe log in, come up with a picture to grab people?s attention. Assuming you already have an account on a blogging platform. It doesn?t help that Twitter sees some of these as competitors and drags its feet on integrating them. And yes, mobile blogging apps still leave a lot to be desired, especially if you?ve got an intermittent connection like on the train.
People also tend to be drawn in easier one tweet at a time, like Beorn meeting the dwarves in the Hobbit. Maybe they don?t feel in the mood for reading something longer, or opening a web browser.
There may also be an aspect of live performance for the tweetstormer and the people who happen to be on Twitter while the storm is passing over, and the thread functions as an inferior archive of the performance, like concert videos. I can understand that too, but it?s a pain for the rest of us.
The problem is that Twitter sucks as a platform for reading longform pieces, or even medium-form ones. Yes, I know they?ve introduced ?threading? features to make it easier to follow conversations. That doesn?t mean it?s easy to follow a single person?s multi-tweet rant. Combine that with other people replying in the middle of the ?storm? and the original tweeter taking time in the middle to respond to them, and people using the quote feature and replying to quotes and quoting replies, and it gets really chaotic. If I bother to take the time, usually at the end it turns out it?s not worth it.
In terms of Bad Things on Twitter this is nowhere near the level of harassment and death threats, or even people livetweeting Netflix videos. But please, just go write a blog post and post a link. I promise I?ll read it.
What’s worse is that people are encouraging each other to do it. It’s one thing to get outraged on Twitter, or even to see someone else get outraged on Twitter and tell your followers to go check it out. It’s another when you know the whole thing is planned and you tell everyone to Read This. Now.
I get that you think it?s interesting, but that?s not enough for me. Tell me why, and let me decide if it?s worth my time to go reading through all those tweets in reverse chronological order. Better yet, storify that shit and tweet me the URL.
You know what would be even better? Tell that other tweeter, ?What an awesome thread! It would make an even better blog post. Do you have a blog??