I've been a little disconnected lately so to remind myself, here's a thread on HOW TO ENJOY TWITTER

Twitter is a highly autonomous platform. by that, I mean _you can shape your own experience to a large degree_. if you experience Twitter as a "hellsite", YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

first, curation: mute. seriously, if politics, COVID, "gf who" memes, whatever, stresses you out, mute it. did you can set temporary mutes so you can come back to it? you can!

don't stress out about "missing out"--you really won't miss it, and if it's important it'll find you

when finding people to follow, actively approach it as a mindful, conscious experience. wander through recommended users, examine quote tweets and replies, consider & turn over in your mind whether someone seems interesting or compelling in some way. the investment makes it _fun_

consider yourself a capricious, vainglorious Greek god. Twitter is here for YOUR purposes, for YOUR entertainment. dismiss (and quickly) what you don't need. don't feel beholden to the "guilty should" or FOMO or things that mere mortals worry about. what do you WANT? find it

if you're investigating an account check out this thread on how to search users--the "from:<user> min_faves:50" is a lifesaver for finding out what an account is _about_. (also disappear down visa's threads in general on Twitter, he's Good At Twitter) https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1191254585970610176

next, engage: this is the big one. don't scroll mindlessly. savor tweets. do they displease you? strike it down with lightning. turn off RTs, mute someone temporarily, unfollow, mute a whole new word. do they please you? cultivate--follow, retweet, quote tweet, REPLY

I can't stress enough how much better Twitter gets when you start conversations. it's worth your time to figure out what people _want_ and how to be friendly (and charming) to anyone you like, because this site _flowers_ on its connections

related thread: https://twitter.com/sadalsvvd/status/1317687380892033027

the real depth is in the people, IMO, and even just playing silent games of who-knows-who, who-likes-who, or just engaging in thoughtful discussion--yes, it exists here!! just find the people who tweet thoughtfully and you find the people who discuss thoughtfully

and the cool thing is that you can contribute, too. Twittering a lot creates a corpus of ideas, thoughts, and memories you can thread into and rethread to get people into your head more easily. I've spent literally HOURS just reading threads from ONE person, soaking them in

so even if you feel like you're threading in isolation or nobody is reading, you're STILL building a personal library of experience that you can always offer people later. and I get success even just from being like, "hey, I wrote this thing--didja catch it?"

generally, I have found that avoiding cynicism, being friendly, assuming best intentions (and blocking/muting VERY quickly if that turns out not to be the case), and treating Twitter like a garden I wander through instead of a roller coaster has made it incredibly pleasant

social media is inherently designed to coerce our attention toward doomscrolling behavior, and, ultimately, money or political power. but with some mindfulness and using tools actively, you can actually turn the hellsite into a wellsite~

seriously, I fucking love it here.