A few thoughts on Twitter, and my engagement on it.
As a resource, Twitter makes for a very effective aggregator for breaking news, information, and media coverage with disciplined curation. As a community, though, Twitter has become an uncharitable and unendurable sewer. Perhaps that would have happened anyway on a platform where character limits prevent any sort of context from attaching itself to any one single message, and one single message out of context is all it takes for the pitchfork and torch brigades to ruin the experience. (At least Facebook with all its faults doesn't have that problem.)
Who's to blame for that? Twitter and its management, for one, which incentivizes activist mobs that aim to silence anyone whose speech displeases them. So do outside organizations that incentivize them by responding to them -- as though they represent the outside world in any real manner. Noah Millman had it right at The Week a few days ago (link at the bottom): The problem with Twitter is that we treat it like it's representative of the world at large. It's not; it's a fantasy. It has only as much power as a community as we grant it in our minds.
I've met some interesting voices on Twitter, and enjoyed the experience for several years. Unfortunately, that experience keeps getting worse and worse, and starting more and more to resemble a kind of fake gladiatorial combat where the worst people have all the incentives in their favor and none of the usual risks of actual real-world personal interaction. People who approach Twitter engagement in good faith will find themselves self-editing further and further in an attempt to prevent being misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented. Only the narrowest possible engagement experience is worthwhile on Twitter's platform, a conclusion I suspect many will reach in the coming weeks, months, and years.
A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted that I would not engage on Twitter until after Christmas. I'm more convinced now that I'm not going to return at all. I will continue to use Twitter as a resource, watching for interesting stories, and also operate my account as a resource for others -- tweeting out links to my posts and retweeting links I find interesting. However, I will not be watching my timeline or my notifications, and so I will not personally engage at all with anyone. I apologize to friends with whom I have had a long relationship on the platform, and hope that their experience is better in the future.
May God bless you all, and I wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy holiday season.
Did Michael Avenatti “commandeer” CNN and MSNBC for months? Erik Wemple has gotten a lot of grief over this tweet, which insinuates that the two cable giants had a passive role in BastaMan’s political ascendancy.
That’s unfortunate, because Wemple’s analysis hits harder than his quip on Twitter suggests.
"I'm speculating, really," Rep. Jerrold Nadler told Rachel Maddow last night after declaring that the reason Robert Mueller won't testify in public is Republican questioning. Ironically, the House Judiciary chair demonstrated in that moment why the special counsel has rightly decided not to join the circus. Mueller seems to be sticking to his guns, and Nadler sounds as though he's realized he can't do much to budge him.
Count Lindsey Graham among the "game-changer" caucus on declassification of Operation Crossfire Hurricane data. Graham alleges that a handful of individuals abused the FISA court and their authority to swing the election, and now they're scurrying as the light shines on their actions.
Just how much of a game-changer is still in doubt, though.
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