Conversations work on Twitter if the participants share enough context, such as similar vocabularies or compatible high-level goals.
Unfortunately the system and its harsh constraints is also really good at matching up people sure to misunderstand each other.
I suspect, though, that a lot of recent angst is transient, due to the inrush of users with wildly different rhetorical standards, and the exciting novelty, including the excitement of discord and performative moralizing.
But the novelty of nasty arguments with strangers will wear off – like how Farmville and similar games become less interesting when their basic mechanics and repetitive loops are understood. The true utility of Twitter will persist, leaving us with a better ratio of light-to-heat than some are experiencing at the moment.
Unfortunately the system and its harsh constraints is also really good at matching up people sure to misunderstand each other.
I suspect, though, that a lot of recent angst is transient, due to the inrush of users with wildly different rhetorical standards, and the exciting novelty, including the excitement of discord and performative moralizing.
But the novelty of nasty arguments with strangers will wear off – like how Farmville and similar games become less interesting when their basic mechanics and repetitive loops are understood. The true utility of Twitter will persist, leaving us with a better ratio of light-to-heat than some are experiencing at the moment.