You can also get clout by dunking on bad tweets. The worse the tweet, the better the engagement. This causes shit to float, making really bad tweets more visible than the good ones.
A lot of bad tweets are also made by clout chasers trying to imitate people who actually know what they are talking about, but as what they are imitating is often only 280 letters long, all understanding and nuance is lost.
Twitter is a shithole because no one can express a nuanced opinion in the amount of text that fits in a tweet. What you can fit in a tweet are some really good insults.
felix had a really good argument about how numbers fuck with people minds on social media and make people do stupid shit, and that is my stance on this numbers create this space where both post are trying to become like the sucessful ones as the like and rts feel good in ou heads so they become plain and repetitive and also you just start comparing with bigger posters like it also happens a lot with reddit too
Even on really chill sites like this I feel that. The reptile brain "I have successfully collected berries" satisfaction to seeing a bunch of upbears on my posts is stronger that it has any right to be.
like our dumb brains are not ready to deal with the whole billions of people we can be seen by because of internet like i have social phobia so it does not get too me as much because i am bad at this but i also feel that i will change a bit on a title here if my brain thinks that i will get more of those sweet chacha points but at least they don't put a fucking public total points like reddit does that is way worse because you can compare on spot with anyone
also twitter is real bad like i got a 10 year twitter account notification this year and twitter over the years has been using their algorithm to make this more and more of the norm like for example if let's say felix likes a tweet or reply this is pretty likely to appear at his followers' feed so if you are aware of this replying to them is pretty mucha safe bet now because you can either do the clout shit or just engage and that will generate more engagement and the quote tweet thing becoming the norm it is just about engagement and numbers now
Twitter is sort of like a social network in that it's about following and being followed (think friending like on facebook). There's people who try to get followers by following others. They'll follow a famous account of any kind, then just start friending people with lots of likes/retweets in the comments. They know the famous people aren't likely to follow back. But if they follow the highly rated nobodies in the comments, then they have a better chance at getting followers. Picking the most liked/shared users is good for your own account because it in turn increases your exposure should one of these people retweet you. And to get tweeted you need to be controversial (ie saying dumb shit) or a good takesmith. So it's mostly people trying to get exposure. Some people get exposure for nothing but their takes, and they don't really have anything else going on, so they get famous just for their tweets. Like wint. afaik he's not a guy who has a podcast or movie or tv show or radio show or anything. He just posts.
The best way to enjoy twitter is to just follow as many people you like as you can. Maybe do a few hate follows so you can laugh at bad takes. Then, you disregard any desire for twitter fame and post what you want.
Honestly, I had to stop using Twitter because all of the fuckin weirdo randos coming into your replies to start shit. Not because they annoyed me off the platform by replying to me, but rather, I couldn't really use it for socializing - I had a tiny following and was forever worried I would come across as one of those weirdo randos. I still scroll through it, but I've basically got it on read-only mode now, haven't posted anything in two years or so.
When your site is so full of people trying to clown on each other for no reason other than "engagement numbers go up" that it's driving people off the platform, you've got a problem.
