I used to think that following people was lame and that communities (like on Reddit) were where it was at. Until Reddit shut down a sub I joined. Because it got mass reported. Yes, it had some toxic people on it, but it also held really deep debates, and it wasn't 5% as horrendously hateful as some of the subs that still exist. It just felt wrong to me, that everyone's conversations were shut off by the electric eye, and all history off those debates was lost. How do you even begin to change your mind, or other people's minds, if you can't even talk? Isn't it the foundation of a working democracy, asking with a functioning press?
Meanwhile, my wife is playing the long game on Twitter. She has a specific way of using it that just works for her. She follows a few hundred people, and she's followed by ~5k people, mostly "nobodies", but a handful are impressive: researchers, journalists, politicians, authors. She has conversations with "household names" daily. She even orchestrated an interview been a well known researcher and an ex NYT journalist on substack. Yet she's an be absolute nobody.
Meanwhile, my wife is playing the long game on Twitter. She has a specific way of using it that just works for her. She follows a few hundred people, and she's followed by ~5k people, mostly "nobodies", but a handful are impressive: researchers, journalists, politicians, authors. She has conversations with "household names" daily. She even orchestrated an interview been a well known researcher and an ex NYT journalist on substack. Yet she's an be absolute nobody.