I done twat
I have deactivated my Twitter account. I might reactivate it long enough to temporarily post a link to this post to explain why and where I've gone, but otherwise this absence is probably final. After going on and off it a few times, I have concluded to my satisfaction that Twitter is inherently and irremediably socially and intellectually destructive and that I (and you) will be happier, wiser and healthier without it.
The crux of this is politics, and dialogue with my friends on the other side of the political divide, some of whom I know to have deeply nuanced and considered opinions. Twitter makes these people sound like fuckwits to me, and, no matter how hard I try, it makes me sound like a fuckwit to them. Politics is hard. Like any complex topic, it needs time and space: space for nuance, time for reflection and mutual accommodation. Twitter permits neither. It crushes the subtlety of real-world opinions into mutilated bonsai soundbites. Stripped of the depth and detail of reality, these soundbites become trivially refutable, and thus stupid, and thus contemptible, and thus infuriating. So Twitter becomes part of the vast mechanism that has turned our politics into a cesspool of vitriol and mutual incomprehension. For this alone, Twitter is loathsome and deserves our contempt.
I could of course just forbear from political discussion, or even unfollow people who post political opinions, but why should I even need to apply such an extraordinary constraint? The problem here is not the friends or the opinions. The problem is the medium, Twitter itself. And it's not just politics. The same pathology applies to any discussion on any topic of any merit.
Meanwhile Twitter suffers all the other pathologies of social media: the fostering and projection of an artificial ego, the nourishment-free pabulum of ersatz social contact, the Fear Of Missing Out. I'm sure it's possible to work round these things, and to foster a happy and rewarding environment on Twitter. I had some success in that direction myself: I was mindful of my usage, and I mostly only followed people I'd met in person. But the entire environment militates against it. Some people do grow beautiful roses in that there horseshit, but that doesn't mean it's sensible to live in a midden.
There's plenty of merit in Twitter too, of course. There's friends, and wit, insight, trouvailles, repartée, dog pictures. I'll miss sharing all these things. But I won't miss the feeling of an endless contest for nebulous appoval points, I won't miss the urge to check my feed thirteen times a day, and I sure as all hell won't miss having to amputate the resources of my mind in order to fit them into 280 characters. So goodbye Twitter, and, on balance, a resounding good riddance.
I think I'd still like somewhere to post pictures of my dog though. Hmmmm... - This post was made on dreamwidth.org, here. If you can, please comment there, because LJ's bugs make it gratuitously hard for me to answer your comments on LJ.
The crux of this is politics, and dialogue with my friends on the other side of the political divide, some of whom I know to have deeply nuanced and considered opinions. Twitter makes these people sound like fuckwits to me, and, no matter how hard I try, it makes me sound like a fuckwit to them. Politics is hard. Like any complex topic, it needs time and space: space for nuance, time for reflection and mutual accommodation. Twitter permits neither. It crushes the subtlety of real-world opinions into mutilated bonsai soundbites. Stripped of the depth and detail of reality, these soundbites become trivially refutable, and thus stupid, and thus contemptible, and thus infuriating. So Twitter becomes part of the vast mechanism that has turned our politics into a cesspool of vitriol and mutual incomprehension. For this alone, Twitter is loathsome and deserves our contempt.
I could of course just forbear from political discussion, or even unfollow people who post political opinions, but why should I even need to apply such an extraordinary constraint? The problem here is not the friends or the opinions. The problem is the medium, Twitter itself. And it's not just politics. The same pathology applies to any discussion on any topic of any merit.
Meanwhile Twitter suffers all the other pathologies of social media: the fostering and projection of an artificial ego, the nourishment-free pabulum of ersatz social contact, the Fear Of Missing Out. I'm sure it's possible to work round these things, and to foster a happy and rewarding environment on Twitter. I had some success in that direction myself: I was mindful of my usage, and I mostly only followed people I'd met in person. But the entire environment militates against it. Some people do grow beautiful roses in that there horseshit, but that doesn't mean it's sensible to live in a midden.
There's plenty of merit in Twitter too, of course. There's friends, and wit, insight, trouvailles, repartée, dog pictures. I'll miss sharing all these things. But I won't miss the feeling of an endless contest for nebulous appoval points, I won't miss the urge to check my feed thirteen times a day, and I sure as all hell won't miss having to amputate the resources of my mind in order to fit them into 280 characters. So goodbye Twitter, and, on balance, a resounding good riddance.
I think I'd still like somewhere to post pictures of my dog though. Hmmmm... - This post was made on dreamwidth.org, here. If you can, please comment there, because LJ's bugs make it gratuitously hard for me to answer your comments on LJ.