By visa. Originally posted on Twitter: https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1094684057173016581
I decided I wanted to take this text seriously, so I’m transcribing and editing for sane HTML formatting. What follows is Visa’s words, not mine.
Visa, if you read this text and want me to take down this document, please let me know. I suspect you won’t mind.
—Teodor
Twitter is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, primarily text-based with limited multimedia support. It combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction and online chat.
Players can read, view and contribute descriptions of objects, other players, non-player characters, and actions performed in the virtual world, as well as the “real” world. Players typically interact with each other by utilizing strings that resemble natural language.
While traditional MUDs typically implement RPGs set in distinct fantasy worlds populated by fictional races and monsters, with players choosing classes in order to gain specific skills or powers, Twitter allows every player to project their own fantasy and define their own game.
The flexible nature of Twitter makes it difficult for any singulra definition of “the game” to become canonical. Conflict between players with different interpretations of Twitter is a key feature of Twitter itself. Indeed, one of the most popular games is “hey, fuck that guy”.
Unsurprisingly, few players put much thought into precisely defining the game that they are playing. Most players “pick it up” organically as they go along, inheriting the unwritten rules and norms of their peers via imitation and (limited) experimentation.
Twitter is also searchable, and allows tweets to be “threaded” in chains.
This allows skilled players to build incredibly complex tapestries of hypertext, consisting of thousands of tweets.
Why would such prolific players choose Twitter as a medium, rather than “websites” or “books”, which appear to be better suited to large volumes of content?
Because Twitter allows any player to interact with any other player’s tweets.
Most casual players do not appear to have caught on to the true potential utility of Twitter, or perhaps they are indifferent to it.
A web of tweets is a living entity that allows players to meet, interact and engage with 1000s of others at the level of individual thoughts.
Properly constructed, a web of tweets allows you to:
We have not even begun talking about relationships. People can build relationships with other players over time and shared interactions. Through cooperation, multiple players can share and merge webs with one another, helping each other find and share the desired information.
Players observed to be “good” and “fun” have even been known to invite each other to meetups, offer each other jobs, become “friends” outside of Twitter. Twitter is a game with extremely real stakes and consequences, both good and bad.
You are not limited to a single identity or account on Twitter. A single individual can play as many different players simultaneously. You can invent entirely different identities and have radically different experiences with each.
Any player can significantly improve their experience of Twitter by examining their own usage and evaluating it against their own desires and goals.
At any moment, any player can completely change their experience of Twitter by deciding to play it differently.
With a little introspection, Twitter can be a tool for self-inquiry, making friends, testing ideas, messing around, finding information, practicing speech, and pretty much anything you like.
It’s also, like everything else, just a game.
Have fun!
[16 days of silence]
Honestly, I’m still not done geeking out about how great Twitter is. Any tweet from any thread can be reused on any other thread,,, do you guys realise how wild that is??? It allows you to create your own cinematic universe.
twitter allows me to do ALL OF THOSE THINGS SIMULTANEOUSLY
This is a thread about threading. 🧵🕸
Interesting conversation with a writer friend earlier about the fragmentation of information. We both agreed that fragmentation isn’t actually a bad thing - what’s missing & needed is better threading. Twitter threads are a specific instantiation of a solution to bigger problem
FAQs
Questions I Keep Getting About My Threads, The Thread
Co-signed
HOW TO GIT GUD
Assemble the Mindcity
Now that more of us are playing the threading game:
As we compete+collaborate effectively articulate things we all care about,
And weave each other’s thoughts into our respective webs,
The desire paths will assemble a mindcity paved with the best individual thoughts
[empty tweet body]
tiny twitter strategy guide
🔸follow ppl whose tweets u want inside u
🔸custom search engine for own tweets + fav others
🔸screenshot highlights from links (cmd-shift-4 on mac)
🔸thread threads
🔸humor (memes, shitposts)
🔸vulnerability
🔸improv, not debate
🔸goddamnit, be kind👉 https://twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1192905560837877760
🎭
the matrix view of twitter occasionally reveals itself to me. I feel like I have about 80% clarity rn. (I never remember to tweet when I have 90-95% clarity).
I almost wanna say “turn it off, it’s too powerful”- but I look again and I am transfixed. It’s a superhuman system
🔥
Twitter is an opt-in infinite improv game where the only wrong move is to try to win
twitter_strategy_advanced.txt
actually thinking on it more I am probably weirdly/unusually well-adapted to “how do you broadcast a lot of your inner self online without getting pwned” and there’s probably stuff I take for granted as obvious that would be very useful for some people to hear
what the journey is like:
100 tweets on what I learned this year about making friends on the internet.
My submission to this year’s @threadapalooza
😂
There’s so much weirdness on Twitter.