The problem with fortune cookie Twitter is evident from one metric: the ratio K of average quality of replies (on a 1-10 scale say) to likes+RTs.
If you get 4 likes, 2 RTs on a tweet where average reply is 8, K=8/6=1.33.
100 likes, 20 RTs, reply quality 1? K=1/120=0.0083.
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And it’s not that you attract dumb people in the mentions. You get smart people *acting* dumb. You’re literally making the discourse dumber. I noticed this tendency in myself which made me sharply pull back from engaging. I was getting tempted to post *dumb* replies.
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Most people who adopt a fortune cookie style are smart and doing it on purpose. I notice a certain clinical, borderline sociopathic approach to the tweeting. They're actively solving and optimizing for extreme reach as measured by likes/RTs and accepting the cost in low K terms.
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This is not a subtle effect btw. The K drops off a cliff rapidly once a person adopts this style (and is good at it). You'll notice their followership skyrocket, and their mega-liked/mega-RTed content rate go way up. It's unmistakeable. Nobody does this by accident.
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The content of fortune cookie Twitter is generally smarm. Smarm is the mind-killer. Relentless snark is perhaps a worse attitude, but snark tends to be self-limiting and easy to tune out. Smarm otoh pollutes the discourse in an uncontained way. gawker.com/on-smarm-14765
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