I don't have ADHD but I certainly find a Twitter thread much more distracting than a blog post to read. I need to untrain my mind that the entire message isn't done by the end of the tweet. And ignore all the other crap that Twitter is trying to get me to click on in the trending topics. I have to be extremely interested in a Twitter thread to read it. It's just a horrible format.

It's the only place that I come back to consistently for enough novel scraps of textual information to hold my attention, the community and culture is welcoming enough for the most part, and the comment box is a single click from the home page. By the time my attention has shifted to article X and the following HN discussion, I usually have enough mental inertia to leave my thoughts at that point. It's a different mindset than if I had to use a separate website to write blog posts on, without any sort of original context.

I remember there was an HN post about static websites and it was filled with comments about how people were wanting to get around to setting it up but they had to go through hosting and theming, and were ultimately sucked into the trap of overengineering. Depending on how your brain is built, for some people this kind of problem is not just a minor annoyance they could solve on any given day, but a persistent obstacle.

But then I could just ask: "Do I actually care about writing?" I would say, to a certain extent, yes. I want recognition that my thoughts existed at one point, inside this mind that's a part of me, regardless of what medium they were conveyed with. If HN commenting is the only form of writing that holds my attention long enough for me to get my thoughts out of my head, then I don't see a problem with it. Otherwise a lot of the parts that make up my whole would die with me, all alone.

I'm sure some of what I've written would make good blog posts if I got around to researching and editing for more than a single session. But because that's not how I write, if I want my voice to be heard then this is about the only way that works consistently enough for me: writing it all at once, before my interest fades and I forget about it later.

So I have a lot of sympathy towards the author. I personally would not use Twitter for this purpose, because it feels like screaming into the void to me, and I wouldn't expect the same kind of responses I could receive on HN, but I share much the same sentiment.

I guess I could link things I want to reply to in my blog, sort of like Daring Fireball, but without an existing readership it seems really lame to try to force it when I can reply in an HN or Twitter comment instead.