How Twitter Ruins Us
And Why Censorship Won't Help
Is it a good idea to have half-baked thoughts able to be quickly and easily permanently published to an online forum where tens of millions of users can see it forever?
No. Obviously.
This is quite a new concept for humanity. Is it working? Has it made our society better? These are questions we’re too busy fighting on Twitter to think about. Has it made our politics better? Well… we used to hear from politicians once a month. Twice, maybe. And when we did hear from them, it was through their PR teams. Their teams would carefully craft statements, publish them, then the politicians would go back into their holes, waiting for the next thing.
But now?
We hear their unfiltered toilet comments constantly. Every casual thought posted forever for millions to see, for millions more to scrutinize, and for media companies to monetize by regurgitating them into sensational headlines for precious clicks.
But for those of us old enough to remember the world before Twitter, we should be able to take all of this with a grain of salt. Because we remember a world where it was difficult for public people to speak in public. But now, we’re treating throwaway comments taken from three-hour long podcasts in the same vein as if their PR team had vetted it for an official statement. And there’s only got to be one bad faith actor who downloads it, transcribes it, and combs through it for offensive things they can make headlines out of to get those precious clicks. Sometimes, they’re even paid to do this by sites like Media Matters. And other times, its just some guy with a Twitter who’s trying to break through.
Outrage and endless media about something someone said in a casual podcast conversation or a half-baked Tweet needs to become taboo, and fast.
Because there’s no law that can prevent this. No moderation. It just has to become a cultural taboo. We must think, “Really? A news report about a Tweet?” and change the channel. It’s free market principles, we live in a world where no one is paying for anything and clickbait headlines are the only way to make any money as a journalist and literally every single person can be a journalist for free.
I’m literally becoming a journalist as I type this paragraph! For free!
The insanely fast and vast democratization of content, unfortunately, seems to be destroying us. No matter what the people who have good faith think or say, there are ten others who are acting in bad faith and will say or do anything to get their clicks. For every good faith comment on Twitter, there are ten bad faith comments. Then the people acting in good faith have ten comments to either ignore, or engage with in good faith, until they can’t take it anymore and throw an insult out there, get quote tweeted, and are stained forever.
And there’s no helping this. Sorry! There just isn’t. There’s too many people. Even if .1% of a Million people are bad faith actors, that’s still 1000 bad faith actors working double time to get you to join them. 1000 bad faith actors who will quote tweet you on their account of people who totally disagree with you, one of which could be so motivated that they find where you work and get you fired.
On Twitter, there are some totally legit opinions that are just unpopular. Being against slavery, at one point in our history, was unpopular. Being against slavery on 1800s Twitter would have meant a screen grab, a quote tweet and a pink slip. Thinking women should be able to have jobs in 1900 would have meant a screen grab, a quote tweet and a pink slip. This kind of behavior cannot be moderated, it can only be made taboo. It has to be embarrassing to be the one who does this.
And Twitter has such an insidious incentive structure. My Twitter account got no more than one like on any Tweet for five months. Not one retweet. Nothing. Then I posted a random Tweet one Sunday, and it blew up. I have no idea why. Suddenly I was getting like after like after like after retweet after retweet. I was excited but also afraid.
The exposure opens one up to people from all sides, insults, quote tweets calling you an idiot, racist, bigoted, the bad faith actors. Not only that, but they can quote tweet you, screen grab you, post your thing on their page so people who totally disagree with you can also see what you said and they can destroy you there, a place with 100% bad faith actors who know nothing about you except that one thing you said. The next day I posted a second tweet about the same sort of thing as my first tweet. That Tweet caught fire right away. Thousands of likes, hundreds of new followers, hundreds of retweets. Later that day I posted another. Instantly, the retweets and likes were going up up up.
But, I couldn’t work. I couldn’t think. I started to sweat. I sweat so much it dried on my forehead. My fight or flight response kicked in. I deleted the tweet.
The next day, I posted another Tweet and hardly anyone clicked on it. Since those couple of days, I have one-one hundredth the engagement I had that day. And I noticed some things. Even though it gave me huge anxiety, I was wondering why my tweets weren’t getting as many likes! I had seven times the followers, but no one was liking my tweets anymore. It made me think about the incentive to only tweet about the thing that got me retweets in the first place. The temptation to make my whole account about just that one thing. It made me think about other people and other accounts and what they would do in the same situation.
So what do we do? Maybe Twitter should be local. Make it so only people in your city can see your tweets. Maybe Tweets should only last a few days. Make it so they disappear. But people will always be able to screen grab and if they want to destroy you they are gonna want to try. Small band aids on what is a great big anxiety provoking mess. The only way out, as far as I see it, is to stop demonizing political opposition. Stop treating people in the other tribe as if they’re unfeeling monsters who want puppies to suffer. Stop treating people who are different than you as if they are stupid and have no reason for thinking what they’re thinking. Treat people as if you have something to learn from them, and them, you.
Then we can talk and maybe have a little less anxiety.