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

[emceeaich]

http://unlinkyourfeeds.tumblr.com/

ETA: some explanation, this is a site arguing (and I agree) that we don't have to dump all our social streams into one another.

[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.)

[grendel1031.livejournal.com]

The title of your post sums up a large percentage of my communication problems with people. Very succinct.

As for the body of your post, I agree completely. There has been a falling-off of LJ discussion which may be attributed to people getting into the habit of limiting their utterances to Twitter-sized posts.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

tl;dr

(Okay, not really. But it begged to be said.)

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

The most seriously over-emphasized (though not necessarily written) pronoun in these messages -- especially the incomprehensible or uninteresting ones -- seems to be the first person singular.

And yes, the common cryptic type of poor APA Mailing Comments were/are also characterized by this same attitude of "I know what I'm writing about, therefor everyone knows it".

[grendel1031.livejournal.com]

I recognize the attempt at humour, but don't know the abbreviations.

Huh??

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Too long; didn't read.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I very much agree. There's also in the "Mike: absolutely" and "Gwingle: have you considered trepanning?" type comments a sense of being deliberately excluded -- this is part of a conversation to which I have not been invited and can't find the rest even if I want to.

When you do misc comments posts you provide context and invite more conversation. These are just irritating babble. They should stay where they belong for people who like them.

[volund.livejournal.com]

Twitter spoor seems to be easily and immediately identifiable as such, due to the format and because the poster usually tags it as such.

I have no problems simply scrolling past them.

I also have no problem with friends knowing that this is one type of post I will absolutely ignore, no matter how close I may be to the person who posted it.

[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.