,
8 tweets,
1 min read
Read on Twitter
When someone does that, and the thread is more than four or five, my assumption is that they've written out the whole thread in advance. Which I regard as cheating.
Not cheating, exactly, I guess. But violating the spirit of the thing.
Again, these are just my idiosyncratic preferences. But I WILL tell you what's obnoxious and gross for real.
I hate hate hate the Twitter thread that goes on for twenty tweets in a seemingly extemporaneous way, and ends with "Anyway, I talk about this in more detail in my new piece [LINK]."
That's not a Twitter thread. It's advertorial.
In the more general case, yeah, I do get why some people draft threads in advance, and there are situations where it definitely makes sense. Hell, my tweets would probably be better if I did it.
There is something powerful in the way that threads evolve in response to feedback in real time—some of mine feel like they're going in one direction when they start, and then end up someplace very different.
If you want to tweet about your new piece, go for it. But put the link to the piece in the FIRST tweet in the thread, or at least say "I've written a thing" up at the top. The other way is lying to your readers about what the thread is.
