🧵 View Thread
🧵 Thread (12 tweets)
the surge of emotional energy from a venkat compliment is giving me the Useless Fellow Power I need to attempt make a thread about the different kinds of threads I make. 106am, let's do this https://t.co/Cs6XVzZoIj
1. THE RUN ON THOUGHT. This is the simplest kind of thread you can do: just think-out-loud into the container of a tweet, and when that tweet gets full, continue into the next tweet. It's basically transcribing your thoughts. Essay-ing on Twitter. Eg: https://t.co/wePFMLoW0q
Oddball confession: one of my first life-shaping experiences on the Internet was lying on a video game forum (Darkstone, Delphine Software). Somebody joked that they got “Helm of the Arse Gods”, and I lied and said I got it too. I was like... 8. Everyone cringed and laughed at me
(Writing essays on Twitter doesn't *really* make use of any of Twitter's unique features or elements. What it *does* do is incentivize you to containerize each thought into 240chars. Some people disregard this, and break their sentences across tweets. That's a bad practice, IMO.)
2. THE THREADED LIST OF PICS. Sometimes I use Twitter sorta like it's Pinterest. I have some visual motif or thought or idea that I want to keep track of and refer to. So I literally copy and paste pics into threads. This was "research" for a novel: https://t.co/TLAV7Zowi5
3. THE THREADED LIST OF QUOTE-TWEETS. Is there some topic that you're interested in? Why not start a thread of QTs? Whenever you encounter an interesting tweet that fits the theme, just QT it into the thread. Here's a thread about NYC-related things: https://t.co/okqiNyy3jR
4. FOLLOWING MY CURIOSITY THREAD. This is one of my favorite kinds of threads to do. I start with some question, and basically live-tweet my research expedition. This one – about Sony Playstation controllers – started at 7pm and ended at 4am. I love it: https://t.co/NU2mDpIOeu
Where and how do you begin to tell the story of the PS4 controller? I feel like it should start with the story of Sony. In 1998, Steve Jobs said “The whole strategy for Apple now is, if you will, to be the Sony of the computer business.” https://t.co/UVcSbeV8nU https://t.co/kCzYG8nLqQ
These research threads are some of my best contributions IMO. The constraint of each tweet (240chars + 4 pics / 2:20 video) is easier to work with than the daunting emptiness of a blank blogpost. I don't need to present a coherent thesis. Just 1 interesting tweet. Then another https://t.co/NpTCrCSQY6
5. THREAD OF THREADS. Sometimes I make these in a bit of a hurry, mainly bc I just want to organize my reference material – but when I look back, I often wish I had used the space to introduce and contextualize the ideas better. I'm still learning! Eg: https://t.co/GJeZUqKZ9Q
6. SLOWLY UPDATED THREADS. Sometimes I don't plan on starting a thread – I just have a tweet idea and I think "hey, there's a similar tweet to this from before!" – and then I add the new tweet as a reply to the previous one. Favorite eg: https://t.co/GlLF8aRusy
7. NOTE-TAKING THREADS. These are usually book threads, though I also sometimes do threads while watching videos. The cool thing about these is that I can often find opportunities to share relevant bits with people later. Thread of book threads: https://t.co/fnnIqawQwD
Thread of books I'm reading in 2018. Deciding that I'm going to focus on optimizing for "books started" (which is fun and interesting) rather than "books finished" (which for me has a sort of masochistic, completionist connotation I'd like to be free of).
Having done hundreds (thousands?) of threads over the past few years, I no longer really think specifically in terms of "what type of thread is this". (Did I ever...?) I just start, and improvise, and do whatever feels natural or right. https://t.co/8RKpjrZfJO