I like to think I enjoy Twitter because it isn’t bloated or stupid. Then, I stumble across a trending topic and I want to gouge out my eyeballs with a blunt spoon.
Trends on Twitter are the worst phenomenon. On one hand, they are a zeitgeist, a sign of the times of how people reacted to world events. Other times, they are just pure, useless crap. Right now, “Rise and Grind” is trending. Yeah, we’re going to remember that one for all of its insight into how world events unfolded. The trending mechanism isn’t even good. Justin Bieber trended for months before Twitter had to ban him as a trend because his crazy fans gamed the system.
I believe in the need for entertainment and fun. Some of my favorite Twitter accounts use Twitter not to spread information, but make me laugh harder than anyone else. But do I need to be subjected to the fleeting entertainment of #puthoeinthetitle and other trends that aren’t relevant to me?”
Why do I need to be subjected to crap such as #mclobster and #tigerblood? How is this stuff relevant to the user? To society? What value do these trends bring to my Twitter experience? Maybe I’m just being curmudgeonly, but I’ve yet to see a trending topic that provided me with any real information.
Even worse are promoted trends. Promoted trends are such an oxymoron even the morons avoid them. You can’t pay people to make something trendy. You can certainly try, but if people hate it, they don’t care about how promoted that trend it.
So fuck you Twitter. Trends aggregate useless information and low quality entertainment, and they don’t provide any relevant information to users. Trends also helped create the #dickbar. If trends keep getting stupider, I will start the trend #bloodbath.
The trending algorithm should weigh the nearness to you (the degrees of separation) of the people blurting out those trends. The further away, the less weight it should be given. But I guess from a CPU point of view this would cause massive failwhaling. It would be interesting to see how that would change the topics, though.
You can change the trending location, though the options are pretty limited. Change it to France or Sao Paulo once in a while when you’re feeling kooky.
I love how you imply that #puthoeinthetitle is not relevant to you
Also, I agree that trends are typically the most mindless crap imaginable, however, I will also admit that they’ve once or twice helped me figure out what’s going on in society. Since I don’t have / watch tv, I had no idea about the tigerblood phenomenon happening around me until I saw it trending on Twitter and got with the program. Twitter trending topics was also how I learned that Elizabeth Taylor had passed away. I see things there before anywhere else. Sad, but true.
“The Anti-Hoe Media” does have a nice ring to it.
I agree, it’s pretty embarrassing sourcing twitter when I reference things like egypt or japan. Twitter needs some kind of news filter, or some business channel..
It’s simplicity was a cool gimmick at first but with the volume of content it now has i’m curious to see how people can increase it’s user value.
My filter is typically “Don’t follow idiots.” That only goes so far though.
But then how will we all start talking about the same thing if we don’t know what everyone else [not in our Twitstream] is talking about? Original thoughts and diverse interests are for suckas.
Most of the time these trends are things I wish I could filter out, though I have to agree with Morgan that it’s usually the first way I find out about some celebrity passing. For the most part, I use tools that let me use Twitter without seeing those tragically bad promoted trends. Worst.
I have this strange thing called the news I use to find out about stuff like that.
Also, I’m a little repulsed by celebrity culture and the ways people treat their deaths.
You gotta love how companies make a great product, give it to the developers and consumers to improve upon it, and then want to take it all back for their benefit and not the consumers. How quickly Twitter forgets that it was 3rd party apps like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite that exploded Twitter’s growth, and the users are the ones that started the ReTweeting trend.
Glad you point this out when no one else really does.
That’s called capitalism. It’s what happens when you need to make money on a product and originally launch it with no idea how to make money.