A Day With Tweetdeck (01/18/20)

In total contrast to my day of digital detox, I recently spent a day with Tweetdeck! For those who have not experienced it, Tweetdeck is a cool app that allows multiple Twitter feeds to be displayed with live updates. Tweetdeck also provides a wealth of other tools to assist in managing your Twitter account.

I installed Tweetdeck on a computer attached to a large TV in the studio, and at first was just there as a novelty—but for anybody with an obsessive personality, there is no such thing as a “novelty”—Tweetdeck was becoming an obsession.

So I decided to dedicate an 8-hour shift to sitting and watching Tweetdeck. Along with my primary feed, I added a group of feeds that are normally really active during any given day, and started my journey into a world of addiction, and FOMO.

The first thing that caught my attention was all the absolutely gorgeous works of art and architecture that I was missing (yes, all my profiles of interest revolve around the arts and architecture).

Literally every few seconds a beautiful piece of art scrolled down the feed. I was constantly having to interrupt the feed to “like” or log the profile account to for review later. This started to pose a problem in itself, since I now had additional computers and monitors up and running with screens full of new and interesting profiles to research.

This turned into monitors filled with Instagram profiles that I was looking through, along with new Twitter profiles, artist websites… I must have had 30+ browser tabs open and active!

So much input, so much art, so much talent - how do I keep up with all of this on a daily basis.

Then the light bulb went on (though not a good light bulb), how much of this am I missing each day—each hour—each minute. Because of the already addictive nature of social media, I had set limits on daily exposure time. I realized why some people are glued to their phones for hours on end - FOMO. What am I missing at the moment?

I sat there switching back and forth between several computers, multiple monitors, stretching the limits of my bandwidth to make sure I caught everything I could catch without missing anything streaming down off the screen.

At some point I felt an odd twinge in my stomach, stopped for a second, and realized I’d blown through almost 10 hours of this Tweetdeck “trance.” Crud, I’m hungry, oh, and hadn’t moved for 10 hours - even with Fitbit egging me on every hour.

In the end, I still think Tweetdeck is an awesome tool for finding new profiles, new works of art, new ideas for further research. But, in moderation, and managing your FOMO.

As an additional point of intrigue though, I can see a “gallery” filled with hundreds of large monitors and hundreds of profiles constantly streaming live feeds. Spending a few minutes in a room like this could be better than most other addictive activities!

#digital #Tweetdeck #Twitter #addiction #FOMO