The Six Plots of Tech Twitter

Matty talks about tech Twitter with five guests, recorded in early January 2021: Sasha Rosenbaum, who had just joined Red Hat, Aaron Aldrich, also newly at Red Hat, Jeremy, head of DevRel at CircleCI, Quintessence Anx, a developer advocate at PagerDuty, and Kat Cosgrove, a developer advocate at JFrog. The idea came from Matty wondering whether tech Twitter has only six basic plots, like the six or seven basic story types credited to Kurt Vonnegut and Christopher Booker. Sasha, Jeremy, Quintessence and Aaron each posted lists, and Kat answered snarkily instead. The cold open is Kat: "Sometimes Twitter is not good."

The Same Plots Again

Kat nominates gatekeeping, in which a startup CEO or VC posts a terrible opinion about women in tech or bootcamp students, everyone quote-tweets to dunk on it for 48 hours, and the same thing happens again about four months later. Matty adds that anecdotes get treated as data: someone says it didn't happen to them and treats that as a refutation. Aaron says arguing past each other is a big trope. Sasha notes that telling a story about one customer is how sales and DevRel work, and Matty says the problem is when a personal anecdote is treated as refuting someone else's. Matty's example is that Kubernetes is bad because it fell over in one organization.

The recurring topics include arguing about Friday deploys about once a month, whether developers should be on call, and front-end versus back-end, which Sasha says turns into gendered gatekeeping. Quintessence adds that Twitter works as a live status page of who's down. Aaron says that when the Friday deploy and on-call arguments die, the DevOps transformation will be done, and the periodic reminder not to deploy on Fridays inevitably tags Charity Majors and leads to the same argument with the same people.

Clever, Funny and Hot Takes

Matty says people who think they've come up with a clever joke should search for it, since the New Year's resolution joke has been made a thousand times. Sasha says not everyone checks Twitter 15,000 times a day, so every joke is new to someone. Matty, who studied improv, recalls the rule "don't try to be funny," and Kat says funny tweets are "intrusive thoughts." Matty says the carefully workshopped tweet never lands and the random thought gets the engagement. Sasha says Twitter downgrades a tweet that gets no likes in the first 30 seconds, and links to YouTube or Spotify, while native video does better.

On defining shitposting, Quintessence says hot takes, and Kat says it's a non-serious statement taken to an extreme, never intended as true or factual. Jeremy and Aaron say it should be nearly void of valuable content, and Jeremy adds there's a purposeful-troll version where someone drops a statement and walks away. Matty notes a hot take that everybody agrees with isn't one, and Kat calls the often-argued ones, like washing cast iron with soap, "room temp" takes, since people still argue.

When to Argue

Sasha says arguing with people made Sasha angry and obsessed for a week, while not engaging means forgetting within hours. Quintessence only engages if someone said something awful to someone. Kat says if something is actively harmful, having an audience of almost 13,000 comes with a responsibility to say it isn't okay, but Kat won't engage with a crappy take about 10x engineers. Jeremy checks a replier's profile quickly to see whether they're in good faith. Matty frames it as public versus private: you may be arguing for the benefit of the people watching, and if nobody is listening it just makes you louder and angrier, so take it to a group text. Aaron offers three levels: call out bad takes publicly, have good-faith arguments loudly so others learn, and walk away from bad faith.

Sasha says a blog post from another person with about 14,000 followers compared a follower count to a stadium of people listening, which stresses responsibility. Kat describes how a pithy tweet in a thread explaining a change to Kubernetes carried no weight at 4,000 followers, but 36 hours later at almost 12,000, people assumed Kat worked for Google or Docker, because Twitter has no context. Matty adds that as your audience grows, your tone and personal posts change, which isn't self-censorship. Sasha says putting "opinions are my own" in a bio doesn't help with screenshots, and Kat removed it since it's not a legal disclaimer. Matty says anyone who wants to go after someone won't read the bio, and shares a friend's email footer: "by opening or replying to this email, you agree that all of my opinions are correct." Sasha adds that Sasha's out-of-office replies are valid JSON.

Tips for Using Twitter

Kat's tip: if you're not a man and get a filtered DM from someone you don't follow that opens with just a greeting, don't respond, since often it's an inappropriate photo. Kat and Aaron add that nobody should open a DM with just a greeting, and to include the actual question. Sasha suggests that if you're not a man, consider not having your DMs open. Matty recommends private lists to curate about 100 accounts, since lists are always chronological and don't hit the algorithm. Jeremy suggests pinning lists in the mobile app. Quintessence says if your feed is monochrome, deliberately follow leaders who aren't white or aren't men, and Twitter's recommendations will follow. Sasha says to follow people beyond the big names, and that advice differs under or over 1,000 followers. Aaron says lists matter more when your follows act as endorsements. Matty and Sasha keep private lists of cute animal accounts for toxic days.

Jeremy's last tip is to use your walk-away power and shut the app off. Sasha and Kat say to have at least one friend who understands Twitter and can take a rant, since many real-life friends only see screenshots on Facebook. Quintessence says a major news cycle mixed with sales pitches and Friday deploy takes can be stressful. Sasha reminds everyone that Twitter is also a community for support, hugs and cat videos, and on most days it's good.

• The Six Main Arcs in Storytelling, as Identified by an A.I.
• The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker