Twitter for sensible people

[sholio]

Thanks to rydra_wong's twitter advice thread and kore's suggestions, I have managed to turn my Twitter from a dumpster fire into an actually rather nice place that I check back on about once every day or two! I still don't do much with it, but I actually CAN do things with it now, without wanting to flee every time I look at it. And it only took 3 things.

1. Make it chronological.
Click on the little sparklies at the top next to the search box, and you get an option to show your Twitter feed in chronological order. I KNOW RIGHT.

2. Reset your "trends" location to somewhere with a language you don't speak (and best of all an alphabet you can't read).
This is a BRILLIANT hack for Twitter's un-turn-offable Trends box (hat tip kore). Clicking on the gear icon on the Trends box will let you reset your location. It'll still show you trending tags it thinks are relevant to you, but now you literally can't read them! Very restful.

3. Turn off retweets.
You have to do this one person at a time, but you can do it with each new person you follow, and I'm slowly cleaning up my timeline one serial rage-retweeter at a time. Every time a retweet shows up that makes me want to claw my eyeballs out of my skull, I click on the person's name, which takes me to their homepage, and the three-dots dropdown gives you a "turn off retweets" option. It will still show you retweets with comments, but at least that feels more like having a conversation. And all their personal tweets still show up. Bingo, you can follow someone you want to stay in touch with, but not have to deal with a nonstop stream of politics, Gofundme's, puppy videos, or whatever it is that you don't want to see, except at your own discretion - I mean, you can still click through to anyone's page and see everything there. You can vastly improve the signal to noise ratio on your timeline, however.

And all of a sudden I'm enjoying Twitter! WHO KNEW.

Comments

[conuly]

CHRONOLOGICAL FEEDS FTW.

I have no idea why people think we don't want those.

[booksarelife]

Me neither

[snickfic]

Oh man, yes, those tricks are difference between Twitter being bearable and not bearable. I actually have a skin that makes it look like Old Twitter, complete with a customized plugin a friend made that disappears the "trends" box entirely, but I imagine looking at Arabic would be equally restful. And of course Adblock is also nice. But yes, with considerable effort, Twitter becomes a pleasant place to hang out, lol.

[yalumesse]

THANK you. I've had a fairly peaceful twitter so far by following most of these already but the muted words described in that thread look awesome.

[sovay]

And all of a sudden I'm enjoying Twitter! WHO KNEW.

I am not on Twitter, but I am glad an enjoyable experience is possible, even if you have to faff around with the platform to a stupid degree!

[yhlee]

Watch as I turn off all the retweets! LOL. THANK YOU.

[naye]

These are all fantastic ways of dealing (I employ all of them myself - I quite enjoy seeing what's trending in Japan, actually...)

[cairistiona]

I also make heavy use out of the "mute" function. I have whole accounts muted (you don't have to follow someone to mute them--what power!), and I also have keywords muted. It's a joy to use mute. You find it under Settings=> content preferences=> muted

[kore]

you don't have to follow someone to mute them

Oh, I didn't know that one!

[sheron]

Nice thank you!!

[kore]

\o/

Turning off retweets is a BIG thing for me.

[leesa_perrie]

Totally doing the chronological thing, asap, and saving the rest for if/when I have to use twitter again for work purposes!

Now, is there a way to get FB to behave sensibly too?!

[sheron]

1. Make it chronological.
Click on the little sparklies at the top next to the search box, and you get an option to show your Twitter feed in chronological order. I KNOW RIGHT.


OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *clicks*

2. Reset your "trends" location to somewhere with a language you don't speak (and best of all an alphabet you can't read).
This is a BRILLIANT hack for Twitter's un-turn-offable Trends box (hat tip [personal profile] kore).

Oh this is a good one! I used to do that with my email (Set my timezone to Japan-time so it would show me ads only in Japanese it was great). I'll do that too!

And I can turn off retweets YAYYYYY.

These are lifesavers. Maybe I will stop fleeing my twitter soon too!

[booksarelife]

I really love the title of this post!! And also yay for decent Twitter!! (I don’t have one and only keep an eye on one author’s twitter and one tv show Twitter and sometimes recessional’s, because Twitter appears to be a hellhole worse than tumblr)

[scioscribe]

I knew how to turn off retweets, but this chronological feed option has revolutionized my entire life. THANK YOU.