My 2013 Twitter year in review

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I decided to go through all my tweets from 2013. It’s an interesting exercise, turning my Twitter account into a kind of a streaming time capsule of my interests, concerns and thoughts from the previous year. Admittedly it was an incomplete picture as I generally don’t share details of my personal life on any of my social networks (though currents of that life may have rippled the surface of my posts and tweets occasionally). What I was presented with though was a record of my reactions to the larger events of the world around me.

The first thing I noticed is that I am apparently much more active on Twitter than ever before. I know this because in early February I had an update where I noted that I had just reached my 2000th tweet. Currently the count is at 3391. This means that about 40 percent of all my tweets have been made in the last 11 months, and I’ve been on Twitter since at least 2009. I’m not sure why this happened. Perhaps one of those personal events that I don’t post about changed my propensity to tweet, or maybe this something I’ve just become more and more comfortable with (or addicted to) over time. I’ve actually made a request or for my Twitter archive (which can take a few days to be send out) because I’m curious what a more detailed look at the data might show, but for now this is a mystery to me.

The second thing I noticed is that I more or less use Twitter as a channel for two different types of communication…links to articles that I felt were worth reading and my own random often silly thoughts. While not a hard and fast rule the former tended to be on subjects that were were serious in nature while the latter were generally meant to pieces of humor. Part of the issue is that I think it’s almost impossible to write well about a complex subject in 140 characters or less. I haven’t gotten into the habit of writing longer pieces regularly (though perhaps that will change) so I tend to outsource my opinions to other better writers. On the other hand 140 characters is often perfect for witty (I hope) quips so I find Twitter easy to to use for this purpose.

The third thing that jumped out at me was how ephemeral our concerns often are. Many events that raged like storms on our social consciousness seem so distant now. From The Boston bombings, the choosing of the Pope Francis, Wendy Davis filibustering the Texas legislature, the government shutdown, the use WMD’s in Syria to less serious events like the birth of Kanye’s baby, the royal birth and the revelations about @Horse_ebooks…re-reading tweets about these events felt like going through a mental closet of old and dusty memories. Sometimes this is unfortunate since the events in question are still ongoing (as in the case of Syria where the dismantling of it’s WMD stockpile is still ongoing, as is the ghastly civil war), but we have the sad tendency to discard events that don’t affect us directly.

On the other hand there were subjects that did have a long shelf life, some lasting throughout the year. Sometimes this was because they were on subjects that are of particular interest to me, and so I always have them on my mind. Examples include the future of digital rights management in triple A games, the continued development of the indie game scene, the moves of and changes in the Federal Reserve, the debate over the correct model to map the macro-economy and the discussion about the utility of bitcoin. I believe other subjects had bigger audiences though. The continued resurgence of the woman’s rights movement, the constant drip of revelations about the NSA and the implications of being in a surveillance state, the ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act and the continued predominance of the issue of income inequality were all subjects I think which maintained a wide salience to many people throughout the year. A decade from now will these be the events that continue to poke through the fog of our collective memory? It’s really interesting to think about which things continue to have a hold on us and why.

Then again I am probably speaking too grandiosely…and out of turn. Can I really tell which subjects maintained a wide public interest and which ones were only the province of a niche group of people…or even how to define how to draw the distinction between these two states? After all it’s my Twitter feed here, a collection of my take on the world as it went by. Of course Twitter and other forms of social media allow me to have a glimpse of what others think as well, but I’ve only seen the tiniest slice of the whole pie and my observations would obviously reflect this. I wonder what others see.

For some reason I decided to end this by going full navel-gaze and collect some what I thought were my better tweets from the year. They tend to be representative of the sillier side of my tweetage (since I usually expressed my serious thoughts through links to others) but not all of them do. Read on only if it appeals to you.

April 1st…

It’s hard to tell, especially out of context, but the following four tweets were responding to the Boston bombing and the manhunt which followed.

Regarding the royal birth…

These two were supposed to be a joke on the popularity of Snapchat. It wasn’t that good but I apparently found a way to amuse myself way to much with the concept…

The next two were in response to the revelation that @Horse_ebooks was being run by a Buzzfeed writer.

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