Why you should start writing online (with twitter)
Writing online has been one of the most positive changes in my life, and I think everyone should do it.
I started writing online in December 2021 on Twitter1, and then on substack with Meditations in 2023. It has had a profound impact on my life, allowing me to meet a lot of cool people, connect with new and old friends on a much deeper level, and vastly improve my employment prospects.
The piece Why you should write by David Perell is what initially convinced me to start writing online, and I highly recommend reading it. It has honestly changed my life. He also has a lot of content on how to start writing online as well.
Besides all the people that I've been able to meet through writing online, the greatest benefit from writing online has been giving myself the ability to express myself in ways I could only do so dimly before. When you're able to express thoughts more freely, you're also able to have thoughts more freely. It's the inverse to how restricting speech restricts thought, e.g. newspeak in George Orwell's 1984. This is why free speech is important, and why you need a space to express your thoughts. It's not just that the space for expression needs to exist, but you need to actually use it to gain the effects.
What using twitter did was rewire my brain to notice any passing thought I have, and express it (via tweeting). Before, all these thoughts would just be lost to the void. I was previously noting down my thoughts before, but they weren't nearly as many as after I started tweeting, and it wasn't a strong habit. Like a pipe that becomes unclogged, my thoughts now flow freely without inhibition. Twitter has trained myself to not pass judgment upon my thoughts, but to simply express them, and analyse them later. What you normally wouldn't ever say in person, you can say on twitter, and not only are you not punished for sharing your wild thoughts, you're rewarded for it. And you'll find that you are not nearly as crazy as you thought you were, because there are thousands of others more unhinged than you.
Some common misconceptions you might have about twitter:
twitter is just fully of angry people getting into arguments with each other
twitter is just for news and politics
twitter is just for following what famous people are saying
Let me address them one by one.
twitter is just fully of angry people getting into arguments with each other
Whilst a large part of twitter may be people getting into arguments, that's not the case for the whole platform, and you can filter what kind of content you want to see. Like any social media, there are different niches within it, each with their own culture. There's a subculture of twitter called TPOT (that part of twitter), which is mainly people in SF, and is characterised by people just talking about life and making friends and vibing together. This is the part of twitter you want to be a part of, because it's more like a giant group chat.
A lot of the value of social media is determined by how you use it. Twitter is one where you need to put a lot of effort into curating your content, but it's worth it. I'll get into more detail of how you can do this later.
twitter is just for news and politics
There are a lot of other sides to Twitter besides news and politics. I'm mainly in crypto twitter (CT), the AI scene, and the aforementioned TPOT. Many industries are represented on twitter, so you might be able to find yours there as well.
twitter is just for following what famous people are saying
Using twitter to follow famous people is probably the worst way to use twitter and social media in general. The best way to use twitter is to post stuff yourself. Most of the people I follow are ordinary people, some are CEOs and influential people, but most are regular people. Good ideas can come from anywhere, and on twitter you can find a lot of people with good ideas that you've never even heard of. What's even better is that you can be part of the discourse, and contribute your thoughts. There are many cases where famous people have responded to random people.
Twitter for work
Twitter is also a great place to set yourself up for finding a job. You can interact with people in the industry and build up a reputation and relationships with others over time.
How to get started with writing online with twitter
1. Sign up for a twitter account (duh). Choose whether you want to be pseudonymous or public. There's a spectrum with this, you can be fully anonymous and never reveal any personal information about yourself, or you can be fully public, with your real name and face. I've gone with using my real name, and revealing the city I live in (but not the specific area), and not showing my face. Most people in TPOT use their real name and face, but then you also have a lot of people in the crypto/AI spheres using anime profile pictures and fake names.
2. Start following accounts you're interested in. If you'd like to join TPOT, have a read of this post.
It’s a guide to TPOT and has a few different lists linked within it. You can also ask me for recommendations on who to follow in general and I’d be happy to help you out.
3. Curate your feed. When you first sign up to twitter, you're feed will be full of absolute slop. Mostly low grade videos from tiktok and other things that'll ensnare your mind. Click on the three dots and 'see less often' to filter this type of stuff from your feed. You'll need to do this a lot at the start, and then periodically do it every now and again, like gardening weeds. A good heuristic for knowing whether your feed is good, is if you have >50% only text posts. The higher percentage of text posts the better, but if it's 100% then something is off. Mine is around 75-80%, and when it declines, that's a smoke test to know that I need to curate again.
4. Start posting! Try not to overthink things. Just post whatever you want. It's good to start off with replying to other people's posts that you're interested in, but don't reply with meaningless words. Try to think of it like you're in a group chat, and you're just continuing the conversation. It's easier to overcome inhibition with posting if you're anon, because you don't have to think about the consequences. That's why I'd encourage you to use a pseudonym if you're worried about what people who know you irl might think. My family knows about my twitter and see my posts so I can't be fully unhinged, but I've progressively worked myself towards there.
That's it! That should be all you need to know to get started. Feel free to message me anytime if you need guidance. And also, let me know your account if you do start one! I keenly await to read your writing.
P.S. I also think Twitter is the best place to have a group chat, since there are so many conversation starters, from other people's tweets. It's seamless to share a tweet you see with a group chat (only two clicks).
Yes I know the name changed to X but I, like most people, still refer to it as Twitter because the name is too engrained into my mind, and X is a terrible name.
oh and one more thing, mute Elon Musk. twitter is unusable without doing so