Twitter hacked the process of writing itself... and then squandered its genius

For about a decade (2009 to 2019), Twitter was one of the most exciting websites in the world. The writing on Twitter is mocked and derided. But I think that such criticisms overlook Twitter’s (former) genius and the way that the site unwittingly made writing easier and better. Here are some of my observations:

1. Most academic articles can be summarized in 3 sentences. Well, that’s exactly the length of a tweet. Instead of spending an hour wading through tedious prose in an academic journal, Twitter forced writers to distill the essence of their ideas into 280 characters. It was ‘all killer no filler’ and this accelerated the evolution of good ideas.

2. Because tweets are so short and seen as disposable, it was really easy to start writing. Three sentences, that’s it, go. But then once I wrote 3 sentences, and got them out of my head and into the world, I discovered that more thoughts rushed in to take their place. Threads gave one the opportunity to add new ideas throughout the day (or even throughout the week). And it was all low risk because ‘heck, it’s just Twitter.’ All of the pressure associated with writing faded, and the ideas were free to come tumbling out.

3. Writers write in bunches. Ideas come in a flood. On Twitter one could post in bunches and the algorithm would sort out which ideas people actually wanted to read. The algorithm (running split-second A/B testing) was like a brilliant editor sending your best work to all of the right people.

4. No headlines! The slowest part of writing is coming up with a catchy headline. Twitter dispensed with headlines.

5. No formatting! Formatting is a pain in the arse and Twitter dispensed with formatting. Words, ideas, that’s it, go.

6. No photos! Finding the right image to go with a blog post takes forever and is often costly (hello Getty Images and Shutterstock). On Twitter one could add an image but it was not essential. Words were supreme.

7. Instant feedback. What writers want more than anything is feedback. The problem with traditional publishing is that it can take at least a year to go from words on the page to feedback. On Twitter, that feedback cycle began in milliseconds and continued for hours.

And now all of that is gone. Twitter caved to the Pharma monsters and deplatformed just about anyone who openly criticized the narrative. A few brave medical freedom activists remain and use the site as a business card to drive people to their websites or books (where they tell the truth). But for the most part Twitter is now a barren wasteland of blue check bougiecrats in one circle jerk all agreeing with each other. The idea factory that was Twitter is dead.

Now lots of critical thinkers are publishing on Substack. But it is so much more difficult to write long posts and the feedback cycle is slow. I’m trying to learn the rhythms of writing on this site but there are growing pains these first few weeks. In all of my writing going forward I will try to remember the wisdom of just getting started and the freedom of low stakes & just putting ideas out into the world that I learned through writing on Twitter.