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I think it's not obvious that this is a place for friendship & kindness & collaboration, some ppl have figured it out but its not easy to see what they're doing, what obstacles they encounter, what tactics are good social skills are generally vague and especially so here
@RichDecibels I think @_awbery_ was the first person I met irl, they dm’d after I spammed their partner’s blog with comments and replies, about 6-9 months after becoming active on Twitter in 2015 ish?? I’ve been meeting and hosting Twitter moots ever since. Probably met around 70 ppl so far.
@RichDecibels Hard to say. The first meets were probably just because they lived where I lived or were passing through (lesswrong had a norm of hosting each other). In latter years I’ve actively tried to meet long time Twitter friends because I know meeting is so cool.
@RichDecibels Well the LW folks in London had some kind of Google group and ppl who were coming to London would ask if anyone could host them during their visit. ditto if they went to the u.s. or Europe, you’d find the local Google group and post your visit details there.
@RichDecibels @garybasin @coyotespike In a way yes, but in another way LW is way bigger than tcot/ ingroup or it was for me for a long time. Scott’s surveys get answered by tens of thousands of people, for example. But I only have about 300 mutuals.
@RichDecibels I think I'm having trouble answering this because of the frame. Twitter was never parasocial or interactive TV for me. it was more like solo or semi-social journal (late 2000's to mid 2010's) to... whatever we have now
@RichDecibels a big milestone for me was taking Tiago's BASB course. I made a lot of friends during that and tweeted and threaded and wrote blog posts and did lots of video calls with people and eventually collaborations and projects and jobs
@RichDecibels after I came out of the cabin retreat in 2020 I was very online in all my free time and made a lot of friends in these neck of the woods - I was in the vicinity before and knew people and interacted but it really came to life then, partly because of lockdown I suppose
@RichDecibels at that point I started prioritizing and doubling down on my projects and putting my writing out there. it was fulfilling for me personally, seemed to help people, and also for our purposes here gave lots of surface area for interacting with me
@RichDecibels when I left the monastery (again) last year I became even more online and soon started traveling full time so that's given me more time for interactions, calls and messages. projects, collaborations, meeting in person
@RichDecibels I basically see everyone on the timeline as a friend or potential friendhttps://t.co/4WhMJYFfKQ
@RichDecibels if anything my growth edge here is bringing this same mentality to people I meet strictly IRL, out of any shared context which helps tremendouslyhttps://t.co/4mkHGR5HlK
@RichDecibels I use Twitter to find online events to then meet people then become mutuals. It’s an underutilized event promoting tool. I ended up getting 50 followers in one night through a meetup promoted on Twitter and various discords.
@RichDecibels @DarbraDawn the people i talked to on a daily or weekly basis changed. the moment people went from “online friends” to just “friends” was when i started counting on them for things people like @DaltonDEmery, etc.
@RichDecibels @DarbraDawn @DaltonDEmery community is really ≠ friends part of the point of a community is that you can find the circle of people who are actually your friends, and among them, who are actually in your inner circle of loved ones
@RichDecibels @DarbraDawn @DaltonDEmery @rhymeswithvocal i never really did the reply guy thing for me it just just a solo or semi-social journal and it still really is if i could only use twitter for one thing, it would still be that. journaling in semi-public saved my life https://t.co/1v0eb7lr4z
@RichDecibels I never really used it parasocially, more just like, tweet into the void or participate in the hashtag of an event I'm at then in 2017 I decided I was gonna talk to people (having been tweeting & reading but not replying much to the people I admired) see https://t.co/p5PutR2IGS