crows call me breadlady

twitter et al are « easy to use » now because we have been using them for years and years.

have you ever seen someone use twitter or facebook for the very first time? it’s fucking confounding.

« what am i supposed to do »
« following? why would i do that? »
« why can’t i get to your uncle’s photos »

usability isn’t a secret UX sauce. it’s years of acclimation and the formation of communities that can bootstrap that acclimation for each other.

Jul 22, 2018 at 5:19pmWeb
Show threadsudo apt install qmmJul 22, 2018
@garbados I've always found that Twitter is just basically yelling in a room of crowded people, and no one paying attention to you. Unless you're some sort of important person.
Show threadivy 🏴🏳️‍🌈Jul 22, 2018
@qmm @garbados thank u!!! this is what i always said too, its a void shoutbox of random black hole ins and outs and i hate it.
and this is what makes mastodon actually social media. everything else thats corporate and hypercapitalist like twitter and facebook is ANTIsocial media and i refuse to call it anything else even if sounds cheesy
Show threadavocado goblinJul 23, 2018

@weirdoslam @qmm @garbados
>twitter and facebook is ANTIsocial media

I wouldn't give it the compliment

Show threadivy 🏴🏳️‍🌈Jul 25, 2018
@a_breakin_glass @qmm @garbados its not a complement at all. for years they tried to market themselves as The Next Evolution In Human Communication And Democracy but, people have been already starting to disbelieve it on a mass scale since the '16 election cycle. and now after Cambridge Analytica, no one, not even the developers and funders of these systems, truely believes it anymore
Show threadelomatreb (moved to cybre.space)Jul 22, 2018
@garbados And don't forget the billions of ad dollars spent on moving their thing into the public eye
Show threadqwazixJul 22, 2018
@garbados yeah like the monkeys that don't go up the ladder...
Show threadbrennenJul 22, 2018

@garbados so much this.

usability, like many other things in the realm of "design", is treated as some kind of magical artifact, mystically inaccessible to all but the initiates of whatever the dominant design cult is at the moment.

we should be more conscious of whose interests this kind of ideological fuzziness and nigh-religious obfuscation of reality actually serves.

Show threadDavidJul 22, 2018
@garbados they are SIMPLE to use, not easy to use. Rich Hickey has a whole thing about this in software design. https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy
Show threadVoxClamantisInDesertoJul 22, 2018
@garbados
Show threadNocta [migrée]Jul 22, 2018

@garbados

(same goes for Windows imo)

Show threadBrendan MolloyJul 22, 2018

@garbados holy shiiit every time i have to log into Facebook for a work project (every 1-2 years this happens), having never used it, it is one of the most daunting UIs ever. And it always changes!

It's like a totally different app, with the same shitty colour scheme. It's like a depressed corporate blue of some kind.

Show threadElias MårtensonJul 23, 2018

@garbados I can confirm that. I don't use Twitter. I have an account but I think I sent a handful of messages on the platform years ago.

Whenever someone posts a twitter message here and I follow the link I have no idea what I'm looking at.