TITLE: Still Skeptical About Tweetstorms
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 19, 2017  2:52 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
The last couple of months have been the sparsest extended stretch
on my blog since I began writing here in 2004.  I have missed the
feeling of writing, and I've wanted to write, but I guess never
wanted it enough to set aside time to do the work.  (There may be
a deeper reason, the idea of which merits more thinking.)  It's
also a testament to the power of habit in my life: when I'm in
the habit of writing, I write; when I fall out of the habit, I
don't.  During my unintended break from blogging, I've remained
as active as usual on Twitter.  But I haven't done much long-form
writing other than lecture notes for my compiler class.

And that includes writing tweetstorms.

I'm one of those people who occasionally snarks on Twitter about
tweetstorms.  They always seem like a poor substitute for a blog
entry or an essay.  While I've probably written my last snarky
tweet about tweetstorms, I remain skeptical of the form.

That said, my curiosity was aroused when Brian Marick, a writer
and programmer whose work I always enjoy,
<A HREF="https://twitter.com/marick/status/909900256447524865">
   tweeted</A>
yesterday:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 [Note re: "write a blog post". I think the tweetstorm is
 different lit'ry form, and I like exploring it.]
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

I would love for Brian or anyone else to be able to demonstrate
the value in a tweetstorm that is unique from equivalent writing
in other forms.  I've read many tweetstorms that I've enjoyed,
including
<A HREF="https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/808045818024497157">
   the epic Eric Garland disquisition</A>
considered by many to be the archetype of the genre.  But in the
end, every tweetstorm looks like either a bullet-point presentation
that could be delivered in Powerpoint, or something that could
stand on its own as an essay, if only the sentences were, you know,
assembled into paragraphs.

I am sympathetic to the idea that there may be a new literary
form lurking here.  Like any constraint, the 140-character limit
on tweets causes writers to be creative in a new way.  Chaining
a sequence of similarly constrained statements together as a
meaningful whole requires a certain skill, and writers who master
the style can pull me through to the end, almost despite myself.
But I would read through to the end of a blog entry written as
skillfully, and I wouldn't have to do the assembly of the work
in my head as I go.

Perhaps the value lies in Twitter as an interaction mechanism.
Twitter makes it easy to respond to and discuss the elements of
a tweetstorm at the level of individual tweet.  That's handy, but
it can also be distracting.  Not every Twitter platform manages
the threading as well as it could.  It's also not a new feature
of the web; any blogging platform can provide paragraph-level
linking as a primitive, and discussion forums are built on
modular commentary and linking.  Maybe tweetstorms are popular
precisely because Twitter is a popular medium of the day.  They
are the path of least resistance.

That leads to what may be the real reason that people explore the
form: Twitter lowers the barrier of entry into blogging to almost
nothing: install an app, or point a web browser to your homepage,
and you have a blogging platform.  But that doesn't make the
tweetstorm a new literary form of any particular merit.  It's
simply a chunking mechanism enforced by the nature of a limited
interface.  Is there anything more to it than that?

I'm an open-minded person, so when I say I'm skeptical about
something, I really am open to changing my mind.  When someone I
respect says that there may be something to the idea, I know I
should pay attention.  I'll follow Brian's experiment and otherwise
keep my mind open.  I'm not expecting to undergo a conversion, but
I'm genuinely curious about the possibilities.
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