Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
This is far from a comprehensive survey, but I asked and 83 people responded.
Survey results are anonymous, so please be honest: I usually retweet/share links:
If I like the title. 3.6%
If I trust the source. 25.3%
After skimming content. 16.9%
After reading content. 54.2%
83 votes Total
I think that the people in my network probably slant towards more cautious thought before sharing, compared to a more random selection in a larger survey. That said, I’m often surprised when I see someone retweet something I shared in a shorter timespan than it would take to read the article I linked to. My guess as to why? ‘I like the message of the title and I trust Dave to share something good.’
Think about these results, what if anything do they say about the reliability of information being shared on social media?
Today marks 13 years since I sent my first Tweet. Twitter has influenced me enough that I even wrote a short (free) ebook to help people get started on it.
My use of Twitter has evolved considerably. It used to play a bigger role in my life because it was a gateway to learning about using technology and social media as a means to share ideas and seek out others doing the same. Now, I find that I transmit more than I engage, and when I engage it’s usually with people I’ve developed long term digital friendships with.
I also use it for news. I hate watching news, but going to the search page (tab) and seeing the trending hashtags is enough to keep me informed without being sucked into the drama and bias of a single news source on TV. This isn’t a comprehensive way to consume news, but these days I struggle to keep from being sucked into the most recent drama that streams constantly through news headlines, and a simple hashtag summary can succinctly let me know if I should dig deeper.
I have to say 13 years after starting that I romanticize and miss the ‘old Twitter’ days of people sharing links to blog posts they wrote and the marriage between Twitter and blogging that, while still there, is far less what Twitter is about. That said, my consumption of blogs as a primary place to engage online has diminished, while ironically I have become a prolific blogger, writing daily for the past 16 months. It’s easy to romanticize something that you simultaneously aren’t likely to want to return to. And so while I miss ‘old Twitter’ I must admit that as much as Twitter has changed, I have changed too.
Watching Twitter change, I do see some positives that I hope to see continue and here is one area that impresses me:
While other social media sites are permitting widespread sharing of fake and unproven information, Twitter is putting warnings like this on prominent and influential people who are spreading false claims.
And while I’m a huge supporter of free speech, and against censorship, I do believe that bad ideas can spread easily and we have an obligation to warn people when influential people are irresponsible enough to promote bad ideas. While the balance between freedom to share and obligation to inform is a delicate one, I commend Twitter for taking the risk in being a leader in this area.
As an aside, I think there is room for a new form of social media, one where people can have public conversations with only invited guests, and everyone watching can have a separate side conversation. These closed but public conversations can have a moderator who can pull in sidebar comments and/or commenters, and so observers can be invited in and involved, if moderators choose. Or, moderators can delete or even block rude, inappropriate trolls that are disruptive to the side conversation.
Wide open conversations seem to bring out the worst in people, especially anonymous people that hide behind anonymity and say nasty things they would never say if their identity were known. A social media site that was more conversational than a blog, that allowed a healthy debate to happen in public, could be something that really helped to create open dialogue in a way that can’t seem to happen on Facebook or Twitter… without the conversation degrading into a petty, angry pissing match where trolls undermine the conversation.
Until that new social media tool comes along, I’ll just keep plugging along on Twitter, playing with how I use it so that it’s useful to me.
My buddy Kelly puts out daily Professional Development (PD) inspirational quotes on Twitter, and I get tagged in one of the shares he does each morning. I love getting these: #MyPDToday
Clarify. Simplify. Focus. Take time to step back – Clarify goals, Simplify actions, Focus intentions. Regular reflection allows one to focus on big goals while making necessary course corrections. Every day is a PD day. #myPDtoday@datruss@tomhudock @JeffreyECourt @DustinSwansonpic.twitter.com/UazmpdYUCu
— Dr. K. Christopherson(he/him)🔥 (@kellywchris) November 7, 2020
— Dr. K. Christopherson(he/him)🔥 (@kellywchris) November 9, 2020
I saw a typo in one of his shares today, and knowing that he shares the tweet more than once a day, I sent a Direct Message to him letting him know. His response: “Thanks. Sometimes those things slip by my editor!! 🤣“
No pretence, just appreciation. I’d want to know if the situation was reversed. Sometimes we don’t get this opportunity on Twitter. We tweet something with a typo and before we know it, it has a dozen retweets and a handful of comments… then we see the typo! This can feel a little embarrassing. But it’s going to happen.
This weekend I was re-reading a Daily Ink that I’d written over a month ago. While reading it again I found two (careless) errors. I changed them, but was still rolling my eyes at myself for missing them in the first place. It’s going to happen.
The reason it’s going to happen is because Kelly and I are putting content ‘out there’. We are sharing our thoughts and ideas on social media platforms. Weare publishing things without publishers and editors. We try to be careful, but we make mistakes. We aren’t publishing books with typos, that have gone through a rigorous processes to prevent those typos from happening. We are re-reading sentences that our brains developed and understand, without seeing every word. We are imperfect editors of our own work.
Then we hit the ‘publish’ or the ‘Tweet’ button.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
There might be some self-professed grammar and spelling police that roll their eyes at what we are doing. For example I completely ignore the idea of writing in full paragraphs here. I’ll routinely have paragraphs with just one, two, or three sentences, and I’m sure that drives some people crazy. That’s how I structure ideas, and if it doesn’t work for someone, they don’t need to read my blog.
Publish your work. It won’t be for everybody. It won’t be perfect. It is still worth sharing.
I was in a Twitter conversation recently that went a bit sideways. I don’t want to get into details, but I want to talk about a landscape of social sharing that is exhausting me. Is it just me or does every challenging conversation seem to go somewhere it doesn’t have to?
Pick any prominent public figure, if they say anything germane to a serious topic, the comment responses are caustic and angry. It’s like people are trolling just to attack. That’s not what happened in the conversation I was having, but that’s where my mind went.
What happened to me was that I went silent. I had more to share, but saw no use in saying more. The conversation between two others went to a place where I could add no value. It was upsetting. I am not someone who likes to walk away from something unresolved, but I didn’t have the words. I typed a response, then deleted it. I did this again.
I can’t stay on Twitter and only share things I think will acquire likes and positive comments. I’m not a poop disturber either, but I want to be able to go to hard places sometimes, to question and to learn. But I’m not feeling like good discourse can happen on social media anymore. Discourse has become argument and different views are not tolerated.
What I’m talking about goes far beyond the conversation I had, but what I’ve seen recently has pushed me away from following conversation threads on Twitter… Not because I’m not interested in the topic, but because I’m not interested in the polar, angry, and even nasty comments that fill any (even slightly) controversial thread.
I’m a huge fan of Twitter. I love it enough that I wrote an ebook about how to get started with it. I use it as a learning tool. I connect with amazing people on the platform, and I have made some wonderful friends along the way.
But recently I’ve struggled to stay engaged. It seems that anger is ever present. Fear is a persistent theme. Teachers with limited resources are asking others to help #clearthelist of teaching resources and items they want others to purchase for them on Amazon. I can’t even begin to talk about the vile that surfaces in political tweets.
I’m lucky that I’ve taken the time to create a great Twitter List of people I most enjoy conversing with and learning from. This reduces the distractions of things I don’t enjoy. But I just can’t help but wonder where tools like Twitter are heading, compared to where it came from?
Beyond sticking to my closed list, and ignoring the rest, I’m not sure how I will engage with Twitter going forward? I used to use it to fill me in on news, but the things that trend upward seem too negative. I used to go to my timeline to find engaging articles to read, now I spend more time editing my choices to focus on, rather than actually reading any links.
Maybe I lived in a safe bubble in the early days of Twitter, shielded from everything except my interests in education and learning? Maybe I allowed too much in? Maybe the tool itself is inviting the wrong kind of engagement? Maybe it’s time to take another break?
The Twitter of old was a really special place, and after spending some time on the tool this morning, I’m feeling nostalgic about what it used to mean to me.
If you read my Daily Ink post via my Facebook Story, or on my wall, please follow my Pairadimes Facebook page. If you read my blog post somewhere else, just skip to the last paragraph.
As I approach a year of Daily-Ink blog posts, after leaving this blog dormant for a while, I’m reflecting on the process. One thing that I like about when I hit “Publish” on my blog is that it gets auto-posted to Twitter, LinkedIn, and my Pairadimes Facebook page. Then I manually go to the FB post on my page and add it to my FB story and my FB wall. I’m no longer going to do this. The challenge is that I often write my post either the night before it gets posted or I write it in the morning over an hour before I post it, (I like to have it done before my morning meditation and workout).
So, daily I have this task that I need to remember to do… and it becomes a chore rather than something I want to do. It also makes me feel like I’m ‘plugging my blog’, saying “Look at me!” And while I love comments and engagement on my blog, I do find I write better when I focus on the writing itself and not an audience of readers. Having my Daily-Ink blog automatically go to Twitter, LinkedIn, and my FB page is enough. Please follow my posts at one of these sites if you normally read my blog on my Facebook wall. Today is the last day I regularly share my posts on my FB wall or on my story.
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And as a special request to all readers, I do love your comments! Comments make the blogging experience better. However when I get a comment on Facebook or LinkedIn, or in a a tweet, they are fleeting. They end up on my timelines, never to be seen again. However, I go back to my blog posts often, and a comment there becomes part of a historical conversation that becomes part of the blog. So as a special request, please comment on my blog posts rather than in social spaces. ~ Thank you!
Back in November, I celebrated 12 years on Twitter and I reflected,
“I still love Twitter, and it is still my go-to place to connect and learn from others when I’m online. But, 12 years in, I miss the power of this network to engage me in deep learning filled with rich conversation. However I also recognize that my focus has changed too. I transmit more than I converse, I dabble more than I engage. If I’m honest, I probably could not have maintained the engagement I gave Twitter at that time for 12 years.“
Recently, I responded to a tweet that asked: “has anyone ever found a friend through twitter and actually met up with them?”
I genuinely miss the days when I would get onto Twitter at about 4:30, after a day of teaching, and I’d scroll my timeline all the way back to the last tweet that I read in order to ‘catch up’ on what I missed during the day. I miss conversations that would last 15+ tweets, with others joining in to the ‘conversation’, and I miss the sense of connectedness and intimacy I had with genuine friends that I had never met face to face. I miss how Twitter was connected to blogging, and conversations went from sharing a link to conversations in the blog’s comments. It was a different time, and it comes with some nostalgia.
But as much as Twitter has changed, so have I. I lurk a lot more. I move conversations to Direct Messages, or other communication tools. I transmit – meaning, when I write this Daily-Ink, or a post on Pair-a-Dimes, or on my Podcast, or YouTube, then I share a link on Twitter… sometimes my last 3 or 4 Tweets might be me sharing something I’ve done. This can seem like I’m marketing or doing self-promotion, and some people don’t like that… I look at it 2 ways: 1. I produced some content to share, and I’d actually like some attention on it for the effort. And, 2. Is it really self-promotion when I’m not selling anything?
If it really bothers someone, it’s really easy to hit the unfollow button. I also don’t read and comment on as many blogs as I used to, and so I’m not engaging the way I wishes others do. That said, I still find it funny when someone retweets a link I share (be it to my content or someone else’s) faster than it would take to read the content that was shared! I make it a rule not to share anything I haven’t taken the time to read or watch myself.
So, as much as I miss the old days of Twitter, I’m using Twitter differently and can’t expect the same experience I had before smartphones, hashtags, and less than 500 people on my timeline. Things have changed. But I still love Twitter, and 95+% of the time I see good things and ‘Angry Twitter’ doesn’t show up in my network. That’s a far better ratio than Facebook, and my community on Twitter that I engage with is still pretty awesome. It’s not what it used to be, but neither am I.
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PS. Twitter EDU is a free eBook I wrote to help people find greater value in the tool when they get started. Share it, if you know someone that can use it.
This is not the ‘New Normal’, this is a pandemic that will come to an end. This is temporary.
We need to be positive. Communicating that this is ‘normal’ is not encouraging to students or parents. 1/3
* This is an opportunity to try new things.
* We are learning at a distance only until we can work together again.
* What a pleasure it is that we can still see each other online.
* Aren’t we lucky to be living at a time when we still get to share experiences digitally! 2/3
Let’s face it, the term ‘New Normal’ is going to be tossed around a lot outside of education, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t construct positive vocabulary and language around these unusual times, in our digital classrooms, and in our communication home.3/3
That is a thread of 3 tweets that I shared yesterday, and I want to add a little perspective:
Imagine being a grade 12 graduating this year and it was your last high school play that got cancelled, or your final season of Track and Field, or your graduation dinner-dance.
Imagine that you come from a single parent home, your parent works 10 or 12 hour shifts, you have siblings that you don’t get along with, and your daily escape to school is gone.
Imagine that you are 6 years old, and you can’t have a play date, can’t use the playground, and can’t spend time with your grandparents, who usually visit you every weekend.
Imagine any one of thousands of scenarios where your routines, your friendships, your family structures, your family financial well being, and all of your extra-curricular activities are disrupted.
Now let’s just call this the ‘New Normal’… No.
COVID-19, schools closing, and ‘social distancing’ have taken so much away from our kids, let’s not take ‘normal’ away from them too.
I write this daily-ink on a blog at Daily-Ink.DavidTruss.com but I’m pretty sure that’s not were people go to find it. When a new post gets published, it also goes to:
My ‘Pairadimes’ Facebook Page
LinkedIn, and
Twitter
I then share it to my Facebook Story and page.
These social media sites are where my daily posts get seen… but are they read? If you’ve read this far, can you please let me know where you found this post?
