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there’s a kind of gross-ish humor that works when you kinda let it slip out loud mid-conversation and everyone can be briefly scandalized— this doesn’t translate to plaintext because everyone gets to read it multiple times and you look more like a sick fuck with each re-read
a lot of twitter is people posting dramatically in a way that’s emotionally correct for them, but it translates poorly into plaintext where it’s technically incorrect and taken apart by pedants. this conflict is like the combustion engine that runs the place
@amyhoy @buster @michaeljlew @nvpkp @eigenrobot evergreen challenge with plaintext is I could write "the problem is that you are a human being" and mean it with great love and humor, and someone could read it as something bleak and terrible https://t.co/OSWsjoyKEB
it’s a miracle that we understand each other to any degree at all via a bunch of squiggles https://t.co/PsUDl21IdD
huge part of navigating this well is to accept the lossy nature of contextless comms in plaintext. like, it’s really not fruitful to get mad at each other for misunderstanding contextless strings of text. that any understanding happens *at all* is remarkable
those of us who have been extremely online for a long time often pick up subtle grammar tricks that we don’t realize we use, eg in this tweet https://t.co/8GCcy4NhF3
the thing about "just ask a girl if you can kiss her" is there's a *universe* of difference between a subtext of "i'd really enjoy kissing you, and/but i'd also really enjoy myself regardless, no worries" and "please kiss me? oh god please say yes???", and that makes all the diff
can’t change this about people! gotta learn to surf the waves if you wanna have a good time https://t.co/60nLuly0jf
plaintext literacy is probably top 5 underdiscussed life skills in the smartphone age. those of us who are good at it seem blessed by the gods while those who are bad at it seem wretched and forsaken https://t.co/5KSUoWhnld
also circling back to OP I think there's like a low-to-moderate chance that the original texter is just BAD AT TEXTING. there is a charming way to say "desperate much?" IRL in a way that clearly indicates you're actually very interested, but that is completely lost in plaintext
this is “plaintext literacy” adjacent but it should probably go into a separate thing about the Magic Mirror / Cursed Artifact nature of the internet https://t.co/bEmolNVitd
the internet does not care how clever your sarcasm is, or how obvious your irony is. It is a Magic Mirror that will take you at your word. So you might as well say what you actually mean and/or joke about outcomes that you actually want https://t.co/9mznsMn5ez
you know how the internet has ad breaks? I’m thinking of experimenting with emo breaks. in between my useful-informative tweets ima say, god, can you see how tormenting it is for me to know all of this but I haven’t yet packaged it in an accessible way?? Rarghhhh I’m fine
just making a note to maybe include this in the essay https://t.co/aWbMYNjJrq
people watching me on youtube *get* me a lot better than people reading my tweets, largely I think because of the inescapable problem of plaintext being read in the reader's voice rather than the author's I feel very Seen by this comment. this is my vibe https://t.co/D3gCKg0nRU https://t.co/yTh6gghDKS
