(no subject)

[numinousdread]

One of my backrationalizations for quitting Twitter: people are absurdly mean and harsh to people they think said something dumb. I really hate this, because it makes me worry I am going to say something dumb and get swarmed, and also reinforces my tendency to think of off-the-cuff statements as having huge moral and intellectual weight (not saying they have zero weight though). I don't want to treat people's character or impact on the world as identical with the quality of their takes, though. We keep reducing people's whole being to the characters they play on Twitter, or the last seven things they tweeted. I feel icky about this. I don't like relating to others in this way, and making them more visible to other people who will also write them off or yell at them based on some stupid thing they said. I can't believe I participated in it for so long, accepted it as a sad necessity of having strong opinions or a social vision.
Yet it is really, really hard to resist giving one's opinion on the tweet we're dogpiling, and people will reward me for dunking on whoever. Getting things Right feels urgent right now. People, especially many people trans people I follow, are disaffected and angry and scared; we often lack patience for the latest iteration of a bad take, feel exasperated by the difference between what should be and what is. So I'm not motivated to be a scold about scolding.
I just hate Twitter, and keep making the same post about hating Twitter. I am so glad that I quit. I'm glad I've mostly eliminated a genre of interaction I felt morally icky and sad about from my life. 

Comments

[matsushima]

I agree with all of this. There are things I miss about Twitter - like the "parallel play" where everyone was posting about their daily lives - but mostly I feel so much better about not seeing or participating in those feeding frenzies.

I get it. Sometimes a bad take really is the last straw and it's easier to snark at someone on a social media hellsite than to, say, personally yell at J.D. Vance… but that doesn't mean it's healthy for anyone.

I miss when social media was still social networking. I think we really lost something in that transition without even realizing it at the time.

[numinousdread]

Yeah, I love(d) seeing little glimpses into people's lives too. I loved when people tweeted about their pets and partners and weird eavesdropped conversations, and finding a new person who saw the world in a congenial or delightfully surprising way.
But yeah... It's shocking to me how much happier I am at this level of use, and how little I enjoy looking at it now.
No more main character-ing from me.