I am proud of having an immaculate Twitter timeline; it is pleasant, easy to read, and entirely devoid of Discourse™ aka the collective brainworm du jour. If you would like to join me in this utopia, here’s how.
TLDR: follow selectively, avoid slop.
don’t default to following back
Twitter injects thoughts straight into my brain. I want to find them interesting, nurturing, or fun. A lot of people aren’t that for me, so I check first before following back. People who post good replies get reconsidered.
mute all retweets
I want the thoughts of people I follow, not the stuff they compulsively agreed with. The nice thing is that this still shows QTs, so if they have something to say, I still see it.
You can mute all RTs by blocking “RT @”.
never read “For You”
I want the thoughts of people I follow, not engagement bait slop Discourse™. The browser extension I use (more below) to tidy the UI literally flips me back to following if I hit For You. I occasionally read it on my phone for a visceral reminder of how bad it is.
unfollow if they make you feel bad
If someone’s tweets make me feel aversive or give me bad vibes, I unfollow. Don’t care how influential, GTFO my feed.
You can also mute accounts that you don’t follow. This can be useful if they generate stuff you don’t like that your follows are liable to engage with by QTing.
one thing i haven’t figured out
Sometimes people I like go on a tear (or are just high-volume posters). I wish there was a “one person can only be max N% of displayed tweets” setting, because I feel overwhelmed when someone starts dominating my feed. Absent that I have to… mute and hope I remember to unmute? Which I never do.
mute words temporarily
The Discourse™ will blow over in a week; let it pass you by.
use browser extensions and userscripts
These can make your experience a lot more pleasant. I like Control Panel for Twitter and Typefully’s Minimal Twitter. Control Panel can move retweets to their own tab, if you don’t want to nuke them entirely.