It’s like Instagram anxiety all over again.
I was a good photographer (I think). Nowadays my photos aren’t so great so I am posting my old stuff on https://glass.photo/nabilahsan. Just like most people taking photos, I was heavily active on Instagram. I did a lot of cosplay photography so I was connected to a lot of local cosplayers I came to know as good friends.
But on Instagram, you need to post everyday or else you won’t get enough attention on your profile. Between my internship, my startup, and finishing up my Computer Science degree, it’s overwhelming.
When I could not post enough, it was demoralizing. Look at all these other folks posting everyday and getting like and comments, which were also turning into paid gigs. Look at everyone taking time out of their lives to network with photographers. I was finishing up my internship so I was attending design events to get my name out there in the UX design space.
I ended up closing my IG account because it wasn’t healthy to force myself to post everyday and then getting anxiety when my posts weren’t doing enough. I shelved my camera. Honestly… best decision ever. All the stress left my body and I felt happy.
Until Twitter decided to show views ON THE DAMN TWEET.
It dragged me back to the anxiety-ridden days of IG and I now would panic about my tweets not reaching enough people since. I saw my view count in the hundred but 0 retweets, comments, and likes. It felt horrible. I was using Twitter as a way to get design jobs (worked well last time). But then it got worse. Not only can I see the views of my Tweet, I can see the views of EVERY TWEET OUT THERE.
Who the hell needs to see this? Views was fine when it was hidden under analytics. If marketers needed to see it, it was a click away. I am pretty sure no one wanted this. One of things I do when working with numbers in design is that I know they can go from 10 to 1,000,000 pretty quick. That’s a much longer length which can affect the other elements on the same line. Metrics may get pushed down or even overlap and it just looks ugly. I don’t know who is approving all of this before release, or if someone is even there. They now moved the views up, but the only solution is to remove it all together because it is an unnecessary feature.
You know what get’s the most views? Polarizing posts. Tweets that get shared because it’s attacking someone or is overtly negative. Doesn’t matter if it is targeting the left or the right, as long as it is targeting someone, people will share the living hell out of it. Views just give more fuel to the fire by showing these horrible tweets are doing more numbers.
Twitter is doing an overall shitty job of showing everyone how to manage a platform. Some idiots might be saying that Twitter is finally shipping features. All I’m seeing is more spam and launch of shitty features that they are fixing in prod.
A freaking dumpster fire, but it’s a dumpster fire we aren’t going to just leave. It’s too valuable. What other alternatives do we have? LinkedIn? Maybe, but not the same as Twitter.