Rant: Twitter

[pioneer98]

I mistakenly replied to a political thing about the price of oil on Twitter. I wasn't even commenting on the actual politics of the thing. The original post said Obama "ridiculed" an idea in regards to oil prices. My bold claim was that I didn't think Obama ridiculed an idea. I didn't say anything about the price of oil. I get 10 replies from one guy talking about Putin, the Saudis, oil futures, fracking, etc. Some of those got retweeted with my handle in it. Then the thread changes subject a couple times and ultimately ends up with a guy asking me "Why would anyone respect Obama?" Seriously, people are insane about politics on Twitter. I don't mean that figuratively. I mean I don't think what they are doing is at all healthy, and they are semi-delusional. It was like I accidentally opened a portal to another world and it was trying to suck me in.

[jim]

I think politics is a life style for many people. Now we have tools where people get to share their ideas. This is the main reason I prefer bury my head in the sand when it comes to social media.

[Famous Mortimer]

Some celeb was talking about Twitter, and they said the reason they stopped using it was because they were constantly being told they were the best thing ever or the worst thing ever, and neither was true or helpful. Nuance seems crucial to a lot of things, and Twitter has none.

I think it's a symptom of the de-education of populations. As funding and standards for schools keeps dropping, more and more people are emerging into adulthood with rotten opinions that have never been challenged, and think that those rotten opinions need to be communicated, all the time.

I'm heavily involved in politics, being in a left-wing group in the UK, but I realise trying to talk politics on Twitter is a fool's errand.

[pioneer98]

The strangest thing about that experience was that it was difficult to understand some of the tweets. Like, I had to read a few of them more than once to understand what they were saying. I don't mean that they were badly written or anything like that. It's just that in order to understand them, I had to understand their point of view first. 140 characters doesn't always make the POV or context obvious...and the POV is so different from mine that it took me a minute to think "OK, so these guys are probably far-right wingers. In that context, what would this tweet mean?" It really is crazy. We're becoming so polarized that we can't even understand each other speaking the same language. Because they misunderstood me, too. Lack of nuance is 100% correct, but probably doesn't describe the whole problem.

[Freed Roger]

Twitter is a Trump enabler. I would hope people had enough sense to get off it. But WE won't. (I say we but I have no account).

If Dorsey had courage, he'd boot Trump and all political heads off Twitter let them provide their own venues.
Sure, the history of Trump lies and contradictions and infantilism has been captured for posterity, but how much more is needed?

[33anda3rd]

I think you have to ask yourself, if you're Dorsey, if what Trump says is hate speech and if you are ok with giving him a platform to practice it. Then he has to live with himself when he decides that valuation and bonuses and profits are more important than words that literally inspire hate crime murders.

[Freed Roger]

Trump is the hero-leader of white supremacists. The followers will try to nuance their stance on Trump, even the El Paso murderer - Pretend disdain of Trump because his daughter is married to someone of Jewish background. Etc.
Yet, No doubt that Trump tweets and rallies speak directly to the wwhite supremacists.

If Trump tweets aren't hate speech, then nothing is.