So, I have been reading some Twitter lately, and I wonder... Why do people use Twitter???

[Emrys]

13. I would know next to nothing about the Ukraine conflict without Twitter.

What I did know would likely be days old, filtered editorially, of questionable accuracy, and in too great quantity to sift through within a news cycle. Some of the Ukrainian accounts I read regularly are actual people on the ground there (as verified from a number of sources for the best part of a year). Some of them include journalists who can go into greater granular detail than they can in whatever mainstream outlets they have and can update in real time if they want to. Their tweets also give a sense of who they are and what their experiences are like that no ossified, static medium could.

I would have a very warped view of my home country Scotland's politics without Twitter. 99%+ of its media are owned by entities outside Scotland, and all have agendas that mean I have to hold my nose in any search for anything resembling plain facts about the country, its governance and the quest among a significant proportion of its population for independence. It would be easy to feel powerless and isolated in those circumstances. I don't, because I can read selected accounts' output that impresses on me daily that I'm most definitely not alone and shares information I would have great trouble finding elsewhere, or at all.

That's just two examples out of many fields in my own experience.

Thing is, when I first ventured onto Twitter, it was weird and overwhelming. I didn't even have an account at first, so I didn't have access to a timeline or Twitter pals or any of the tools that Twitter uses to bring new users into the fold.

You're stalled at that stage. There's no reason for you to go further if you don't want to. Its no skin off my nose or anybody else's who does use Twitter and finds worth in it on a daily basis. But kindly quit looking down your nose at those of us who do, because it's unnecessarily obnoxious.

This endless succession of threads, usually from people who have little experience of Twitter and no interest at all in learning more because they dismiss it out of hand, seemingly berating those of us who do for our choice among the vast information stream we all have access to nowadays, gets really tired.

Use the media and the internet and these forums however you want to. And let those of us who do find useful information on Twitter on a regular basis and drag it back here to share carry on doing so without the constant timewasting griping.

If it's a post of mine, there'll usually be fair warning that it involves Twitter. Unless DU decides to ban Twitter content from DU, it's not going away.

Probably tl;dr, but you asked a question. There's an answer.