Microblogging is so much easier than macroblogging! Which is probably bad.
I've been a pretty active microblogger for a long time now. My husband and I didn't meet on Twitter but we did quite a lot of bonding over it in our early relationship, which was during the first Trump administration (a wild time for Twitter, and the Internet in general). When Elon Musk acquired Twitter and it started getting very bad I tried out Mastadon, people didn't really go there though and so I went to Bluesky next and I maintain a pretty active presence there. Which is probably bad for me, on net, but I do like a lot of the website and the people there.
I do think it's atrophied my ability to think in longform. Maybe even damaged it but I do find it's coming back so it's not as bad as that. I like to post short updates about what my family is doing, I like to post sarcastic commentary on the politics of my country (which are an absolute dumpster fire, obviously, but it's a way to cope).
A lot of time when a post takes off you'll notice that a lot of people are taking it in a different way than how you meant it. Often this leads to them yelling at you. Sometimes though it leads to them really liking your post instead. Is it gratifying when people really like what they thought you said? I mean kind of! But it really lays bare the kind of "communication" that's sometimes happening when you're talking in chunks of 300 characters or less.
Longform feels riskier. You probably know what I really think about the end of a post! Of course, most people aren't going to read that far (which I don't mean resentfully, it's just the nature of the Internet and writing in general). I think I find the feedback a little more gratifying in this case, though.
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This post was last edited 8 minutes ago.
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