when you use a bird to write with, it's called tweeting
May 11, 2021 7:25 AM   Subscribe

Last year, I asked for YouTube channel recommendations, and you guys delivered. I found a lot of good stuff and YouTube is now one of my go-to sites on the internet. I just joined Twitter last week, and I'd like to ask the same thing for that.

This isn't starting from scratch, because everyone already has Twitter, and I already follow like 90 people from media, blogs, podcasts, and yes, some of the YouTube channels you recommended. But there are a couple of people who do Twitter exceedingly well, and I'd like to find more like that. Specifically, I'm talking about Anne Helen Petersen, who, in addition to writing a lot of incredible stuff herself, also links to a ton of thought-provoking articles by other people, and just starts interesting discussions. I liked her before Twitter, but her Twitter justifies the existence of the medium. On the contrary, I followed Shea Serrano because I enjoy his writing, but his Twitter game is a little underwhelming.

I described my taste in the last Ask as "upper-middlebrow", and that still applies: The New Yorker, This American Life, the old Grantland, etc.

One of the things that was helpful with your YouTube recommendations was not just the recommendations themselves (although they were good!), but their effect on the algorithm. I found a lot of other channels after watching a few videos from the ones you suggested. Even the ones I ended up not subscribing to had a good effect on my algorithm. Right now Twitter's algorithm apparently thinks I'm really into the various members of One Direction, which... is not true.

Also, is there anything like @Horse_ebooks anymore? I used to have Twitter just to follow that account. It's been dead for years, but I still mourn.
posted by kevinbelt to Media & Arts (8 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
You might get some recommendations here from a fellow @horse_ebooks fan.
posted by jabes at 8:10 AM on May 11, 2021


If you enjoy political discussions you may enjoy @KevinMKruse. He's a historian and his Twitter clapback game is high level.

@hellohistoria is a Welsh historian who posts a lot of beautiful Welsh architecture and history, and posts from other historians.

@BadAstronomer comments a lot on bad scientific takes and his excitement about astronomy is wonderful to read

@SwiftonSecurity posts about cybersecurity, but also sometimes things like terrifying corn facts and nihilistic pony stories.
posted by DiabolicalMeow at 8:50 AM on May 11, 2021 [2 favorites]




Nick Cho, who is the wonderful Your Korean Dad on TikTok, focuses his Twitter time on anti-Asian racism, the whiteness problems of the coffee industry, and sneakers.

Civil Eats is a magazine of sorts, writing about food news in the US (more about labor and supply and practices than cooking, but some of that too).

Writer/dogsledder Blair Braverman and her husband Quince Mountain. Both are amazing storytellers, and you get tons of dog photos and videos with the stories.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:30 AM on May 11, 2021 [3 favorites]


@darth - dog defender, potato facts, fun photoshops, heartwarming
@SarahTaber_bww - "Crop scientist, ex-farmworker, industrial safety pro" - lots of interesting stuff about the food supply chain.
@zeynep - one of the earliest and most no-bs reporters on the COVID19 beat. Good on a lot of other stuff whenever the COVID19 beat eases up. Tweets a bit much.
@pptsapper - army guy gives a ground eye view of life in the US Army. As a military historian, his Drunj History threads are both entertaining and informative.

Seconding: @SwiftonSecurity, @BlairBraverman, @QuinceMountain.

I strongly suggest getting a third party twitter client if there's one available on your platform. They're not super well supported by Twitter, and a lot of the new features are either unavailable or very difficult to do. But it's SO worth it to not be at the mercy of Twitter's algorithms. On the Mac/iOS I'm a fan of Tweetbot, though I've gone so far as to make my own.

Because it's a social site, you don't need Twitter's algorithm's to surface things for you - the people who you follow will do that. Many of the folks mentioned here form a very loose knit community which will introduce you to other folks.
posted by wotsac at 10:00 AM on May 11, 2021 [2 favorites]


Twitter is basically unusable for me without Tweetdeck (run in-browser, most browsers are fine) and lists to split my follows out into columns like people I know, local news and agencies, national politics, writers and content creators, funny animals, weird bots, etc. I have 27 columns. I am very curated, and I have no truck with algorithms.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:05 PM on May 11, 2021


Yeah the power of Twitter Lists is huuuuuge even though they are a very downplayed feature. You can go to realtwitter.com which is just a custom search which will show you ONLY the people you follow and not a bunch of other stuff jammed in to your timeline.

Your likes and mine aren't the same but I have basically a list which is just 15 people where I want to see every tweet they make, and then one that is local to Vermont, and then the rest is mostly firehose stuff (and one goofy account that is just called not humans and it's just joke tweeting animals) A few people who I think are good/interesting on twitter

- Waldo Jaquith - does software for the government, lives in Virginia, decent man. Calls himself a 'thought follower" and I appreciate that. Overlaps with tech dork twitter but not toxic male startup twitter.
- John Overholt - he's Horace Rumpole here but also a rare book librarian, he combines humor with his work in ways that please me. Overlaps with rare book twtitter

Seconding SwiftonSecurity and Darth. Zeynep is a little too heavy for me but she's good at the medium. A few people you've probably seen but who come up for me often--Emily Nussbaum (from the New Yorker, overlaps with Jewish twitter), Tressie Cottom (info and culture, VERY good at Twitter, overlaps with black twitter), David Perry (news and info, also has some overlap with disability twitter), Gyasi Ross (Native issues but also hip hop and etc, overlaps with Native twitter). I'm sure there are more that I am not thinking of. I also love the randomness of Everylot USPS and encourage you to find a few rando accounts to follow just for fun.
posted by jessamyn at 3:19 PM on May 11, 2021 [1 favorite]


A Quokka Every Hour is nicely weird, and the Edinburgh Samoyed Rescue is dependable for pretty dogs once a day.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:54 PM on May 11, 2021


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