It doesn't talk about what the return on (time) investment is. I've made several concerted efforts over the past 10+ years to use Twitter, with various accounts on various subjects, dutifully regularly posting, following, unfollowing etc. as per recommendations in articles such as this, but all I've ended up with is the sense of having wasted an enormous amount of time and got nothing worthwhile in return. I don't think I've being using it incorrectly, and I'm starting to think that actually might be the attraction for many people. The received wisdom seems to be that people are being manipulated into squandering their time on the social media platforms to view more adverts and increase their profits (with the underlying assumption that the time would have otherwise been spent on more fruitful pursuits), but I'm starting to wonder if many people actually want to waste their time for whatever reason, e.g. to escape the bleak realities of their grim existences.
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> I've made several concerted efforts over the past 10+ years to use Twitter, with various accounts on various subjects, dutifully regularly posting, following, unfollowing etc. as per recommendations in articles such as this, but all I've ended up with is the sense of having wasted an enormous amount of time and got nothing worthwhile in return
Same for me. I did try to avoid any drama and keyboard wars, but it's simply not possible with how often the algorithm pushes political topics into the trends.
I'm thinking about blocking it in my router, i don't think i'll be missing out
When you approach it from that angle it must be super frustrating, but if you don't look at everything in life from an ROI perspective then it gets a lot easier.
I try to be a 'force of good' on whatever platform I join, over the years my focus has shifted considerably and that in turn made me decide to quit certain social media websites (for instance: fieldlines, slashdot), and join others. I'm not the most social person in person (to put it mildly) so this allows me to compensate for that to a certain extent.
The notion that some people want to escape the bleak realities of their grim existences is not particularly new. One just has to look at the history of alcohol consumption; for parts of history, a lot of people were drinking quite a bit. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_alcoholic_drinks#Me...
Sure, people also use Twitter for that. And almost everything else. As a kid that was surely a big part of why I read huge quantities of SF novels.
But that doesn't mean that the only point of having a beer or reading a paperback or using Twitter is time-wasting escapism. I learn a ton from Twitter, getting insights and experiences from people I never would have heard from otherwise. Other people get real community out of it. Still others find it professionally useful: networking with colleagues, finding jobs, keeping up with their fields.
So maybe you're using it wrong and maybe it's not for you. But your inability to get something out of it doesn't tell you much about the experience of a lot of people.