My new years resolution was to stop using Twitter actively, and I've basically done that (spare a few offenses). I was intending to pin up a link to a page explaining my reasons, but haven't gotten to it yet.
Public venues like Twitter have devolved into pitchfork-wielding mob battles over extremely stupid, petty nonsense (on all sides of the political spectrum), and I expect this to just continue to happen over and over again as the influentials of the "Twitterati" get better at pushing manipulable people into whatever half-baked agenda they want to use them for.
The "influentials" are the people most rewarded by this system of relentless psuedo-controversy: petty, shrill narcissists that contribute little (or negatively) to anything of genuine value, merit or productivity.
Through a few personal experiences, I've been made a lot more cognizant of the fact that I won't be able to avoid the mobs by staying out of them. I've decided it's best to just not participate at all, and to work to break the systems that enable the mobs in the first place by coming up with better systems.
We need to go back to having sane, civil, intelligent discourses about real issues online, and figuring out the best way to facilitate them. Twitter is never going to work for that, no matter how many lunatics-running-the-asylum tribunals they come up with.
Public venues like Twitter have devolved into pitchfork-wielding mob battles over extremely stupid, petty nonsense (on all sides of the political spectrum), and I expect this to just continue to happen over and over again as the influentials of the "Twitterati" get better at pushing manipulable people into whatever half-baked agenda they want to use them for.
The "influentials" are the people most rewarded by this system of relentless psuedo-controversy: petty, shrill narcissists that contribute little (or negatively) to anything of genuine value, merit or productivity.
Through a few personal experiences, I've been made a lot more cognizant of the fact that I won't be able to avoid the mobs by staying out of them. I've decided it's best to just not participate at all, and to work to break the systems that enable the mobs in the first place by coming up with better systems.
We need to go back to having sane, civil, intelligent discourses about real issues online, and figuring out the best way to facilitate them. Twitter is never going to work for that, no matter how many lunatics-running-the-asylum tribunals they come up with.