Too many pronouns, not enough referents

[redbird]

I just figured out (at least a large part of) what I find annoying about twitterings reposted to Livejournal and Dreamwidth: I'm getting a mix of short things that might be complete in themselves, or might be the start of a conversation, and responses to things I never saw. Tweets aren't long enough to provide context, the way I try to with my "save comments" posts, so in between the possibly ephemeral but coherent ("I hate February" or "Dim sum anyone? HSF, noon.") are things like "Mike, sorry I can't make it" and "That sucks." And I have no idea who Mike is, let alone what the poster won't be doing, or what it is that my friend is agreeing sucks.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

They remind me of apazines.

[redbird]

What they remind me of is John Hertz mailing out commentzines on an apa to lots of people who aren't in that apa. When I write a commentzine the intended audience is people who, if they don't remember what I wrote, can look at the previous mailing. I also tend to be more prolix than you or he. For example, here is a single comment from my most recent zine:

The bit about motivation being broken feels familiar on some levels, the ones where I realize that I’m getting a lot done by creating patterns that I then don’t have to think about (like "it’s Tuesday and I didn’t work out yesterday, so I will go to the gym" rather than "do I want to exercise today?"). I suspect that some degree of that is present in most people, which in turn suggests that there should be known ways of dealing with it other than "find a goal that has built-in schedules and/or motivation and then follow them." And of course creating patterns may not be enough without deadlines, and the kind of deadlines that go with things like my workouts may be too fuzzy for you, especially as they don’t involve anyone else.

You don't know, from that, the specifics of what my friend was concerned with, and I have deliberately omitted their name, but I think it makes sense. (Yes, that zine also includes a comment that just says "Nice vignette," but most of them are longer than that.)

[volund.livejournal.com]

What they remind me of is John Hertz mailing out commentzines on an apa to lots of people who aren't in that apa.

I find there's a difference (yes, I'm one of those who get periodic batches of his APA-L zine, Vanamonde). There are often enough some choice morsels in what John writes prior to his comments proper ... some amusing, some informative.