I'm honestly surprised you can get as much done as you do, Dan, given this addiction. I have enough problems with productivity, and I've never gotten around to getting into Twitter. If I did, my life would be even more unproductive.

Twitter is like the message board of the world. Unfortunately, it's severely lacks in moderation. Many, including I, enjoy a passionate argument with an individual of differing perspectives. However, you can't argue with a troll.

Twitter's a joy for all the trusted users who keep tossing up links to great reading. And it's made it easy to keep track of former Stranger staffers and commenters.

I hope you read the comments, Dan, because I suspect you have blocked twitter accounts for more than simply the criteria you listed. You have apparently blocked me, and I'm sweet. (Just ask my Mom.)

I blocked you, Cat?

What's your twitter handle?

I thought the headline said Joss Whedon Quite the Twit

@WywrdHistori Thank you. I was genuinely afraid I really HAD said something rude.

Nowhere on the internet, including Slog comment threads, is arguing worthwhile. Minds are only changed over time, through deep consideration, or in-person.

I'm amazed at the seemingly boundless energy of someone like Scott Wooledge (@Clarknt67) to go back-and-forth for hours or days. He's got a quick mind but doesn't so much win as outlast his sparring partners.

My ego's [almost] never on the line, so I put up what I think are interesting bits, or what I flatter myself is worthy snark or novel insights, and walk away.

Maybe I should get a twitter account to see what all the fuss is about. I'll probably get around to it just when it's going out of business and the new thing is starting up. That's how I roll - on stone wheels.

Oh man, Twitter! That takes me back.

No good deed goes unpunished. Nobody is ever pure enough. All art must be world-view affirming propaganda.

This is what happens when yelling at people in 140 character bursts passes for "activism."

I would rather buy and read (more of) your books (some of which I’ve been re-reading lately) than see and instantly forget your tweets. (Once I tweeted to you that I wanted to see the skull rings you and Terry wear, because I’d read about them, and a few minutes later you replied with a photo of them on your interlocked fingers. That was a thrill, I have to admit.) But in the main Twitter was just creating extra static in my life. I seldom go there now.

When I first moved here, everyone used to brag about how they didn't even own a television. Now you can't walk down the street without seeing a bunch of zombies glued to their phones staring at more mindless bullshit than ever. Funny how quickly things change.

As for Twitter, I can't get past the hashtag. It looks terrible and I don't want to read anything formatted in that way.

After that woman who was groped downtown initially tweeted about it to Dan and other media outlets but her story was ignored here for a long time, I figured you'd already pulled back from reading twitter.

Nowhere on the internet, including Slog comment threads, is arguing worthwhile. Minds are only changed over time, through deep consideration, or in-person.

Christ, you're an idiot.

I quit Twitter almost immediately after starting it.

Hate following is an interesting phenomenon. I got into that exactly once (but it was an ugly and long once) and then realized that the wonder of the internet was that people I didn't like didn't have to exist in my world. Why was I constantly bringing them in to my world and letting them make me upset and anxious?

I've been sort of following a mostly online fracas between sci-fi authors that has so much of this. Someone writes "Your a jerk!" and then there's a big long post about how much nobody cares what that poster thinks that is totally self-defeating. There were 3 pages of comments about whether calling someone out for calling someone out for being gay was concern trolling. It's all kind of ridiculous.

Making your world an echo chamber is bad. I do try not to do that (by making sure not to make the venn diagram of "People I don't like" and "People who disagree with me" a circle).

But sometimes I start to get hyperanxious about what people are doing online, and then I have to just breathe it all out and let it go, because that shit can make us crazy.

A blogger friend of mine quit Twitter a few months ago as an experiment and said after a couple of weeks "not constantly exposing myself to – and participating in – this endless cacophony of advertising-soaked shrill, mean-spirited outrage is a wonderful experience". Needless to say he hasn't gone back!

...people "on my side" who only punch sideways. (They don't punch up, they don't punch down, they punch only the people standing with them.)

This is the way I feel about so many "activists" on the left, including those who had a hand in ending the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.

I took a break from a couple of non-social media sites that were very busy and often had a lot of hateful energy to them, and was so at peace when I was gone that I never went back.

I understand you don't want to quit Twitter, but I hope you will consider something like a one-week long break. Ask yourself how jittery you get when you can't check it, as well as if there's an increase in productivity and/or peaceful downtime for you while you're gone. Then adjust your usage accordingly. I'm a firm believer that as much as we like to engage in politics (I'm a blue gal in a red state), there are times that the constant barrage of anger is draining. We all need a break.

@17 :)

The only realistic part of the new Avengers movie was Ultron deciding humanity must be destroyed after being exposed to the Internet for 10 seconds.

I still like Twitter a lot better than Facebook.

Twitter is so annoying. It obviously serves a purpose, just not for me. The pile of books I've still got to read would go down even slower if I got caught up in it.

The sooner Twitter gets it over with and dies, the better.

What is this Twitter? A bird? Softly chirping? How can one quit that?

No TV here, and no Twitter. It's amazing that anyone talks to me! Oh, wait, they can talk to me because I'm not glued to an electronic device!
OK, I do own a smartphone, and I do text on it ...