Says NYT reporter Maggie Haberman in an interview at Slate.
There seems to be a lot of hating of Twitter. I was just reading that Andrew Sullivan piece, blogged in the previous post, and it had a stray line of Twitter hate that stuck with me:
[A decade ago,] The Atlantic was crammed with ideological opposites... and our engagement with each other and our readerships was a crackling and productive one. There was much more of that back then, before Twitter swallowed blogging, before identity politics became completely nonnegotiable, before we degenerated into these tribal swarms of snark and loathing.Twitter swallowed blogging.... yet blogging was better. Things have gotten uglier. I keep my distance from Twitter (and Facebook), but I think there's an idea that the interactivity is better on Twitter — so fast and intense. By comparison, blogs don't seem to happen. The very thing blogs did that was so exciting 10 years ago is what blogs just don't seem to do at all anymore. And yet people are powerfully unhappy with Twitter. Everything looks so ugly and cruel. And it's Trump's milieu. So painful for Sullivan, Haberman, et al.
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52 comments:
before identity politics became completely nonnegotiable
That's rich coming from Andrew Sullivan.
I usually peruse Twitter when I'm sitting on a toilet seat.
I like Twitter -- it's good for finding information, and spreading information. You have to use it wisely, however, which is why so many New York Times (and Slate) writers get in over their heads.
And I'll add -- the problem with Twitter is solely that people don't realize that no one cares about their opinion!
If you're sending out facts, great. Your opinion on something? Why are you more Twitterworthy on that than a million other Tweeters? You aren't.
Stop Virtue Signalling. Stop giving your opinion. It will make Twitter a better place.
Basically, anything that allows the non-elite to talk back to those in power - anything that allows people like Trump to by-pass the gatekeepers -
is hated by people like Sullivan.
But if you want to have a grand conversation about Edmund Burke and his affect on British Conservatism from 1850-1875 - twitter is the wrong place.
Twitter is a affirmation seeking, dopamine hit driven, self perpetuating division machine. It drives people apart because ultimately too much is left to interpretation (or misinterpretation) with a mere 280 characters. People are seeking the wrong things when they're on Twitter. They aren't looking for fact, they're looking for feelings. They aren't looking for information, they looking for affirmation. They're not looking for reasoned discourse, they're looking to confirm their biases.
The very thing blogs did that was so exciting 10 years ago is what blogs just don't seem to do at all anymore.
Last night I was very excited to post a new article on my own blog, which is about the movie Dirty Dancing.
On the Internet, I found a photograph that shows the entire bottom part of a pink two-piece outfit that Baby Houseman is wearing while dancing with Johnny Castle in the "Hungry Eyes" scene. The movie audience cannot see the outfit's entire bottom part, but now they can see it on my blog.
So, some blogs indeed still are doing exciting stuff -- just like ten years ago.
My blog article is titled
The Bottom Part of Baby's Pink Bra Outfit.
The very thing blogs did that was so exciting 10 years ago is what blogs just don't seem to do at all anymore.
Blogs are still doing what they always did. They have broken down the walls of the gatekeepers to information.
The left just jumped off of the free thinking part of the internet a while ago and went the giant corporate fascist route.
So painful for Sullivan, Haberman, et al.
If you frame important conversations as Trump versus the world, you'll get the dumb binary comments you deserve. Long before Trump ran for president, intelligent people left and right lamented how twitter lynch mobs attempt to exterminate every independent thought and every independent thinker.
One of the biggest reasons that I follow a blog like Althouse (to a very minor extent) or a golf blog like Geoff Shackelford or a college football blog like MGoBlog, is that they are following, and aggregating Twitter for me. So that I can remain removed from Twitter altogether.
As long as Twitter is a good medium for Donald Trump and Scott Adams, I'll persist in regarding it with suspicion and derision. Still, I know that there will be times when I'll enjoy a particular Tweet here and there. Like David Frum's.
I quit Twitter a year ago - it had become all outrage mongering and negative, at least to me through the people I was following. I came to dislike what it encouraged me to do, which is to be biting and angry, sarcastic and aggressive; a sort of hate machine. Just decided I didn't want that in my life. And it's been good not being there (also Facebook).
The blogs, such as this one, are much more interesting, engaging, and enjoyable. There's anger and vitriol here and elsewhere, in the comments mostly, but I can just skip over those.
-sw
I love Twitter. But I don't go there to spout off. I go for the laughs and links. I follow a lot of funny people..love parody accounts.
But that's just me.
I like Twitter myself. It connects me to thinkers and ideas I never would be exposed to otherwise
MadisonMan said...
And I'll add -- the problem with Twitter is solely that people don't realize that no one cares about their opinion!"
Oh, they care very much if you send out a tweet that is offensive to the SJWs. People have lost their jobs because of their tweets.
Twitter is a affirmation seeking, dopamine hit driven, self perpetuating division machine. It drives people apart because ultimately too much is left to interpretation (or misinterpretation) with a mere 280 characters. People are seeking the wrong things when they're on Twitter. They aren't looking for fact, they're looking for feelings. They aren't looking for information, they looking for affirmation. They're not looking for reasoned discourse, they're looking to confirm their biases.
I could not agree more. Our public discourse now consists of instant emotional reactions driven by the most excitable and divisive people.
Twitter is a step up from an image with "no comment", which invites inference, speculation, projection, and confirmation bias. As for identity politics, it's diversity or color judgment, it's a bad solution, go along to get along, it's over.
Mike S. great blog post.
Although, I was mostly looking at the pictures.
Blogging vs. Twitter.
It depends on what you mean.
LGF with Charles Johnson was really twitter - before Twitter. Johnson would usually just post a link and a paragraph of banal prose and get 1000 comments. You can do all that on twitter now.
OTOH, if you want to say something of substance, blogging is better.
Up until a few weeks ago, Althouse was the first thing I opened up every morning when I sat down with my cup of coffee.
Now. . . . it's probably Twitter, something I never spent time with until a few weeks ago. I follow only a few folks (sample: Brit Hume, Ari Fleisher, Stealth Jeff, Andrew McCarthy) and I don't try to collect followers/
One reason for the shift? By the time (West Coast) I get on the computer, many Althouse posts that start out with an interesting idea are hijacked by Inga, Chuck and - worst of all - PeePee Pants. I swear one of the recent posts was 50% or more of PeePee's wild (and noxious) ramblings. I always look for Bruce Hayden, David Begley, the various "Mikes", Madison Man etc - but they are getting harder and harder to locate when 90% of the comments are attacks on others.
BTW, its funny how "We" became all "Tribalistic" and are "living in our own echo chambers" only when Trump got elected.
Too bad Hillary didn't win. Then everything would be peachy.
On Twitter everyone knows you're a dog.
Twitter delenda est.
Twitter is a heckler's medium.
I miss blogs, but many authors have stopped due to the above. Commentariat, do you have any you enjoy that you'd recommend?
Once Haberman discovers (probably from an anonymous source) that the character limit is now 280 she'll be able to be twice as imprecise.
Nonapod and Beldar got it right.
My theory is that aliens created Twitter. Think about it. If you were invading a planet wouldn’t you like to know who the idiots are? Twitter allows them to self-identify. Fly-paper.
The most common justification I've heard for using Twitter instead of a blog was when people would say to me, "The discipline of confining myself to 140 characters makes me think and write more clearly."
To which the obvious and conclusive response is: What stops you from limiting your blog posts to 140 characters?
@ Ken B: The Bolsheviks rounded up and executed the intelligentsia to avoid future dissent.
The aliens could round up and execute the heckler-entia using Twitter. Friends & neighbors, save yourselves!
Twitter delenda est.
There are lines from a poem by Conrad Aiken, "For we must hear and bear the news from everywhere/Infinitesimal or vast, from everywhere." I think of those lines several times a day now.
I pretend I don't like Twitter because that makes me look sophisticated.
Twitter is just fine as long as your expectations are reasonable; I find it easier to keep up with bloggers who may not post more than once or twice a week via their tweets linking to new posts than to rely on the RSS reader. On the other hand, I don't go there primarily to keep up with politics/political commentators. And important breaking news displays very rapidly, which is a benefit for those of us who don't see the television channels or have the radio on most of the day.
"There was much more of that back then, before Twitter swallowed blogging, before identity politics became completely nonnegotiable, before we degenerated into these tribal swarms of snark and loathing."
Everything progs touch turns to snark and loathing. Like ethics and linguistics and anything else, Twitter is just a tool, intended to impose their hegemony
Except--Trump turned the tables. That is what they find truly loathsome. No prog cares about "snark and loathing."
"Twitter swallowed blogging.... yet blogging was better. Things have gotten uglier . . . And yet people are powerfully unhappy with Twitter. Everything looks so ugly and cruel. And it's Trump's milieu. So painful for Sullivan, Haberman, et al."
The fact that Trump has made it his "milieu" is the only ugly thing to progs. It signals they don't have a monopoly yet. It shows that there is room for doubleplusungood deplorability. Blogs were boring venues for free expression--relatively useless to the prog project. Twitter was supposed to help progs monitor the intertubes 24/7. But now Trump and his desirables have invaded--at least for the moment. Painful is to weak a word.
As Colbert said, all thoughts reduced to 140 characters or less. What could go wrong? Clearly no chance of miscommunication with something like that.
"I love Twitter. But I don't go there to spout off. I go for the laughs and links. I follow a lot of funny people..love parody accounts.
But that's just me."
Not just you.
:)
If Twitter wants the love of Maggie-the-Clinton-Mouthpiece back, or Andy-My-Head-Is-Firmly-Implanted-In-Sarah-Palins-Uterus for that matter- there is an easy solution- just ban Trump.
wild chicken: ...I don't go there to spout off. I go for the laughs and links. I follow a lot of funny people..love parody accounts.
Yes. There are some very witty people on twitter. It should be used "seriously" only as a link to longer form exposition. That it's full of people for whom 140 characters is more than enough room to express the limits of their thinking isn't the fault of the medium. Those same people crap up blogging and every other medium, too. Yes, even "prestige" publications.
The question of why The Atlantic is no longer "crammed with ideological opposites...[whose]...engagement with each other and our readerships was a crackling and productive one" is a good one, but it's not "because Twitter", even partially. Sullivan, and people like Sullivan, can't seem to come to terms with their own part in the rise of ideological "tribalism" and the concomitant dumbing down of punditry.
E.g., when Sullivan writes about Coates v. West, he won't come out and say the obvious, what any sane educated person who doesn't have his head up his butt notices - yeah, Coates is "tribalizing", and "anathematizing", but more than that, he's a sub-mediocre thinker and writer. It's not just diversity of viewpoint that's been purged, it's any "slightly taller than the norm poppy", as far as intellect goes.
I never got interested in Twitter and I'm glad I didn't when I see the comments.
I've had my own blog for years but mostly use it to draft posts for other blogs like Chicagoboyz.
Facebook for me is mostly family and a very few friends, almost all of whom have known for years.
There are still quite a few blogs I read.
I do miss the days of Usenet and the groups. I used to post a lot on the Tom Clancy group and Clancy would sometimes comment like Ann does here.
Twitter has its uses. But politics and reason and really, any intellectual pursuits are not among them.
My twitter feed is largely politics-free, but there are plenty of food posts, pretty ladies, and videos of good dogs, sports highlights and metal bands.
I stopped going on Twitter about 2 months ago. It was hurting my personal and professional life, and I don't miss it.
Clearly some old bloggers are jealous that they have lost their audience that was once intrigued with them.If you can't stand the Tweet-heat, stay out of the 140 character kitchen.
SUCCINCTNESS of the message is the key. Some have it and some don't. The best ones do a succinct sentence, and then another, and another, and they number them in one subject "thread." See, Thomas Wictor.
Twitter is merely a pit stop that will progress to hash tag grammar that will evolve as clicking and whistling.
re: clicking and whistling
The key is to recognize the progressive attention span of diverging human minds.
"grammar that will evolve as clicking and whistling."
There are some African languages now that involve clicks sounds.
@ traditionalguy: I do stay out of the Twitter kitchen, because, to extend your metaphor, not every subject needs roasting.
Anything important that shows up on Twitter is going to show up in a place that I do visit, so I really don't miss that kitchen at all.
Stay safe, Beldar. All you really need to know is faithfully explained on CNN and MSNBC.
As long as Twitter is a good medium for Donald Trump and Scott Adams, I'll persist in regarding it with suspicion and derision.
Someone who doesn't know you and love you like we do might be worried that you have developed an unhealthy obsession, perhaps a psychosis, with Trump.
Beldar:
Coincidentally, I've seen your comments at Popehat.
On point, and very informative. Just like here.
Exactly opposite from Chuck, Inga, and PPD.
@Kathryn51 (and everyone) - I use Chrome browser and the Killfile extension. It's magic. Click on 'hush' next to a commenter's handle and all of his comments are blocked. It makes a huge difference. I am pretty sure it's also available for Firefox, just google to find it.
[Alison:] @Kathryn51 (and everyone) - I use Chrome browser and the Killfile extension.
Killfile -- much to my PPD induced regret -- stopped working with OSX/Chrome, both up to date.
I'd pay good money to be shot of his vandalism.
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