Meanwhile, politicians themselves must assign Twitter its proper place in our online constellation of space. It’s real life, but it’s Not a scientific poll. It represents a specific user community whose importance has been heightened by the presence of flavorists, media influencers, politicians and academics. .
There’s no easy way to have good judgment, but it’s a good idea to double-check yourself every time you find yourself getting too excited about a movie on Twitter by asking a Not terminal online colleague or loved one about it. If your words about Bean Dad attract a blank look, it’s a sign that you’re getting involved in politics as much as talking about it. World of Warcraft Moonkin Druid builds in a mixed company and should probably step back. The larger political forces, like Black Lives Matter or the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, because they are so attached to the material world, belong to a different class altogether and must be taken seriously. And it’s a useful experience for politicians and their aides to consider: Is today’s prevailing topic the result of actual organization in the physical world or a purely public discourse? online?
Potemkin Public Square
Twitter, often hyped as a “public square” of everyone, from academics and decent people to men like Elon Musk, nothing is good.
It is a superpersonal realm masquerading as a collective realm, and it subtly promotes the same attitude toward self-responsibility. Branding and expression of catharsis are individual businesses that require the unwanted involvement of others. When you take to Twitter to lament the coming apocalypse, whether from Covid, monkeypox, climate change, the neo-Nazis rising in the West or the neo-imperialism of China. National or Russian, you’re expressing what a lot of people feel—And with good reason. But basically, you’re also venting. You do it to feel better, because it feels good to say this and experience the authentic value of the picoseconds you get from others who agree with you. In the end, that’s all the platform really is.
What Twitter does not induce is any sense of responsibility towards others. Yelling about the apocalypse can make you feel better even if it adds to a symphony that is ruining someone else’s day.
Historicist elites need to stay away from the ill effects of this behavior. For all of our sakes. Or at least just stepping back enough to designate Twitter’s niche in our lives, as a window among many to the wider world. For many people, abstinence makes no sense, but harm reduction does. Replacing the urge to scroll with something else is a small but important first step, as well as testing your instincts about popular opinion with your little friends online.
Acting as if Twitter were a microcosm of humanity meant to intimidate us all of, regardless of whether we are on the platform or not, with its maliciousness. And, as someone who once likened the Internet to an old means of transport, I think we need to seriously rethink our desire to turn every virtual space into a “public square.” and ask serious questions about what we really want and need from such spaces.
To borrow from the vernacular of the platform, it’s time for all of us to touch the grass.
