Which direction does Twitter scroll? Which direction do you scroll?
October 18, 2018 6:27 AM
I know this would be an easy question to answer but I literally don't know anyone else who uses Twitter regularly. Which direction does Twitter scroll, and how do people use it?
On my devices, new tweets appear at the top of my feed (top of my phone) and then older tweets appear below them, toward the home button/bottom of my phone. I use Twitteriffic on an iPhone because I avoid promoted tweets and stuff that way. I consume twitter by starting with my thumb at the top of the screen and then dragging it downward so that my timeline scrolls "up".
I am asking because I've seen two things that confuse me:
1) Those tweets where the person is behind the wall (the little ascii art that's like, "psst..." and then some unpopular opinion) don't make any sense in this format. I see the "truth" part first (at the bottom) then I scroll upwards and see the little person at the top. This doesn't make any sense.
2) I recently saw the movie Eighth Grade and there's a scene specifically where Kayla is reading twitter from top to bottom. She is scrolling downward (her thumb starts towards the bottom of her screen, then she is dragging it upwards), implying she is going in reverse order. This makes sense on a platform like Instagram where chronology really doesn't matter (in fact this is how I use Instragram). Maybe a teenager doesn't care because the twitter accounts they are following aren't important in time, it's all just random things.
How does anyone consume twitter if they are reading it downward (like a newspaper or online article) since tweets are going backward in time? Threads, when viewed en masse (Twitteriffic has these on a separate screen), properly go from top to bottom, but when viewed as part of my timeline, they are doing the exact opposite. Can someone help me understand? Is there some setting I can choose to make this work differently?
On my devices, new tweets appear at the top of my feed (top of my phone) and then older tweets appear below them, toward the home button/bottom of my phone. I use Twitteriffic on an iPhone because I avoid promoted tweets and stuff that way. I consume twitter by starting with my thumb at the top of the screen and then dragging it downward so that my timeline scrolls "up".
I am asking because I've seen two things that confuse me:
1) Those tweets where the person is behind the wall (the little ascii art that's like, "psst..." and then some unpopular opinion) don't make any sense in this format. I see the "truth" part first (at the bottom) then I scroll upwards and see the little person at the top. This doesn't make any sense.
2) I recently saw the movie Eighth Grade and there's a scene specifically where Kayla is reading twitter from top to bottom. She is scrolling downward (her thumb starts towards the bottom of her screen, then she is dragging it upwards), implying she is going in reverse order. This makes sense on a platform like Instagram where chronology really doesn't matter (in fact this is how I use Instragram). Maybe a teenager doesn't care because the twitter accounts they are following aren't important in time, it's all just random things.
How does anyone consume twitter if they are reading it downward (like a newspaper or online article) since tweets are going backward in time? Threads, when viewed en masse (Twitteriffic has these on a separate screen), properly go from top to bottom, but when viewed as part of my timeline, they are doing the exact opposite. Can someone help me understand? Is there some setting I can choose to make this work differently?
I like to catch up from where I left off so often when I open the Twitter mobile app it will show the last tweet I read (which was at the top when I last used it). Newer tweets will have appeared above that so I scroll up to read them (in chronological order). However when I'm on a desktop computer, I will start at the top and scroll down (until I see a tweet I've already read) because it doesn't save my place in the same way as my phone app does.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:38 AM on October 18, 2018
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:38 AM on October 18, 2018
I scroll the way you describe the girl scrolling in the movie, and it honestly never occurred to me there was another way. But then, I use twitter every few days or so, so I don't really have any hope of "catching up" or "starting where I left off" anyway, so the experience of wondering what people are talking about and then figuring it out (or not) is sort of baked into the Twitter experience for me.
posted by lunasol at 6:48 AM on October 18, 2018
posted by lunasol at 6:48 AM on October 18, 2018
It sounds like Twitteriffic flips the standard scroll behaviour - In most apps, starting your thumb at the bottom of the screen (when there's more content below what's visible on the screen) and dragging up will show the content that's below what's currently on screen.
(ETA: Unless you're starting in the middle of your timeline and scrolling up to newer tweets, in which case it's more a matter of different use cases - I know I generally just scroll down from the top of my timeline until I get bored.)
posted by sagc at 6:54 AM on October 18, 2018
(ETA: Unless you're starting in the middle of your timeline and scrolling up to newer tweets, in which case it's more a matter of different use cases - I know I generally just scroll down from the top of my timeline until I get bored.)
posted by sagc at 6:54 AM on October 18, 2018
Moving my finger downwards on my phone or tablet scrolls the page or app timeline up. In my experience this is how nearly all such devices work.
posted by lokta at 7:23 AM on October 18, 2018
posted by lokta at 7:23 AM on October 18, 2018
I prefer to use Twitter via an app that will present the tweets in a coherent timeline (I use Echofon but I'm sure other apps exist to do the same) instead of a mystery subset of tweets made up of what Twitter thinks I want to see (their web interface). That way I can quickly scroll down to the last unread tweet then then go up from there, reading forward in time.
posted by exogenous at 7:40 AM on October 18, 2018
posted by exogenous at 7:40 AM on October 18, 2018
I don't have an app and just use the mobile webpage. I start at the top of the feed with the newest tweets, then move my thumb from bottom to top to scroll down, back in time. I'm not on Twitter constantly but I don't follow enough people for it to matter that much. If I see a tweet that looks like nonsense, either it will be part of a thread I can click through, or I can go to their profile directly to see the context.
posted by muddgirl at 7:44 AM on October 18, 2018
posted by muddgirl at 7:44 AM on October 18, 2018
These answers have convinced me that I am not crazy for being confused with Twitter's UI, but I am crazy for being on Twitter too much. Thanks all :)
posted by obtuser at 8:56 AM on October 18, 2018
posted by obtuser at 8:56 AM on October 18, 2018
I grew up with computers and the internet and Twitter is the most baffling service I've seen, especially considering how widely adopted and used it is.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:35 AM on October 18, 2018
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:35 AM on October 18, 2018
« Older How should I protect these new workboots? | Left Tabbouleh out overnight - is it still safe? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
Your sense of Twitter is correct. The newest tweets are on top, so if you want to tell a story in multiple tweets, the ending will be the first thing people read.
Except, you can "thread" your tweets so that they appear in the proper order: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/create-a-thread
Not everyone threads tweets though.
I (used to) read twitter top to bottom, newest tweets first. It often means I'm confused about some ongoing current event related joke, but as you keep going down, it becomes clear.
Everything about twitter makes more sense if you never put it away and are constantly on top of all the tweets. Then you get to the point where you can't wait for a new thing to appear at the top because you've read ALL THE TWEETS. This is also why I deleted twitter.
No idea about what's going on in that movie.
posted by dis_integration at 6:36 AM on October 18, 2018