Twitter is poison to American political discourse. Can't we find a more worthy pastime?
I deactivated my Twitter account about a week ago.
I was partly acting on impulse, because the social media site had just, for no obvious reason, “permanently banned” someone I follow, something that seems to be happening more and more.
But I was also acting on my growing belief that Twitter is, well, horrible.
...I think that Twitter is the worst.
In fact, if you set out to design a platform that would poison America’s discourse and its politics, you’d be hard pressed to come up with something more destructive than Twitter.Twitter has the flaws of the old Usenet newsgroups, but on a much bigger scale.
Precursors to Twitter required accountability...
If you didn’t like a blog, you could just ignore it.
A story that spread like wildfire through the blogosphere still did so over the better part of a day, not over minutes, and it was typically pretty easy to find the original item and get context, something the culture of blogging encouraged.
As James Lileks wrote, “The link changes everything. When someone derides or exalts a piece, the link lets you examine the thing itself without interference.”
Bloggers often encouraged their readers to follow the link and “read the whole thing.”
...Unlike blogs, little to no thought is required (the character limit discourages it), and in practice very few people even follow the link (if there is one) to “read the whole thing.”
...This isn’t a call for banning Twitter.
But it is a suggestion that maybe our time is better spent elsewhere.
Since I got off Twitter, I’ve filled the downtime I used to fill with tweeting by going what I did pre-Twitter, reading novels on the Kindle app on my phone.
It’s better, and I’m happier."
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