>if you hung out talking to people at a random bar, or on a random Discord server, or at work
The difference is that the Twitter ingroup has much more variety and quality (as evidenced by the big LW contingent) than your local bar, since it selects from a huge pool of people in large part for the ability to come up with cool ideas and takes. It’s also much more conducive to open conversation on any and every topic whatsoever in a way that your workplace clearly isn’t (nor should be, you have work to do!)
Of course, your local bar or server or workplace may just happen to be a unique scene that’s even better, I’m not claiming that the Twitter ingroup is somehow ideal or optimal. But most people’s local bars aren’t like that, while Twitter is easily available for everyone everywhere to try out.
>if you hung out talking to people at a random bar, or on a random Discord server, or at work
The difference is that the Twitter ingroup has much more variety and quality (as evidenced by the big LW contingent) than your local bar, since it selects from a huge pool of people in large part for the ability to come up with cool ideas and takes. It’s also much more conducive to open conversation on any and every topic whatsoever in a way that your workplace clearly isn’t (nor should be, you have work to do!)
Of course, your local bar or server or workplace may just happen to be a unique scene that’s even better, I’m not claiming that the Twitter ingroup is somehow ideal or optimal. But most people’s local bars aren’t like that, while Twitter is easily available for everyone everywhere to try out.
No, it just selects for the ability to be viral on demand. Which is anticorrelated with truth.