August 27, 2018

How to Make Twitter Good: Do It Yourself

Dominic Lipinski/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

I’m sure I’ve said this before—maybe on Twitter!—but we should all pay a whole lot less attention to Twitter. A lot less. Stop obsessing about it. Stop arguing endlessly on it. Stop following hundreds of people, many of whom are stone assholes. Stop getting upset because one or two—or a few dozen—people say something nasty about you. Stop thinking you might change minds or win arguments on Twitter.

Just stop. Twitter represents the American id, to a certain extent, and if you voluntarily decide to dive into our national id and swim around in the muck, that’s fine. But know it for what it is, and don’t bother the rest of us with your discoveries. We all know that there are lots of assholes out there.

For the rest of you, follow these rules:

  • A “meme” doesn’t exists unless at least 10,000 people have repeated it on Twitter. In the Twitterverse, 10,000 is about equal to 100 in the ordinary world.
  • Follow people you like following. Ditch all the rest.
  • If you’re a thin-skinned type, block people with abandon. Don’t allow any second chances. If they say something mean, block ’em. You owe them nothing.
  • Don’t argue with assholes. This is actually just general advice for a healthier life, but it’s super-good advice for Twitter.

I’m not sure why I suddenly felt the need to repeat this. I guess it’s because we’re going through another round of how horrible Twitter is and how horrible @Jack is, but honestly, Twitter is only as horrible as you allow it to be. It can be the worst place in the world or it can be a modest part of your life that’s good for an occasional laugh or some handy information. The folks at Twitter will probably never change, but that doesn’t mean we have to just accept what they give us. With a small amount of effort, it’s not that hard to make Twitter into something that’s personally fun and useful.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate