@Dianora @Haste @odd i remember you from early twitter, you were one of my moots

@Haste @odd there’s a nuance there. Mentions came before replies; and there’s the subtle difference that a mention didn’t create a thread. there was no reply threads for a long time so “replies” were implied by time. so if someone was experiencing a pile on the only way to know is to go to the “mentions” tab on their profile.
(a thing that used to be possible)

@Haste @odd when twitter was smaller, two way conversation was indeed more common, there was
more a vibe of experimentation and play- and the rules were a bit different than how it is now:

no pictures, no replies, no retweets, no search, and history only could go back about 100 posts.

as soon as retweets, replies and search got added, the vibe got less fun because retweets let dumb throwaway remarks go “viral”, blind replies turned virality into pile ons, and search enabled kiwifarms style analysis of targets

@JoscelynTransient hrt in 2021 but first steps in that era yes