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| The essence of most Twitter posts |
My sons, after all, have a perceptive saying that I think sums things up rather accurately. The Internet can be good, but has a lot of bad; social media is mostly bad, with only a little good; but Twitter is of the Devil. I'm inclined to agree.
Like all things, I know there can be good people of good will, even those I disagree with, who take to Twitter to muse or joke or throw out ideas. Most Twitter posts, however, are what I would consider the worst level of pre-adolescent style rants and idiocy that I remember from my middle school days and the kind that define the worst of modern online debate. Heck, our locker rooms back then featured more mature takes on the issue of the day than what I see on Twitter today.
That Twitter became a trusted source of information for the modern news media is all I need to know to place no value in the modern news media. They could say they get their sources from middle school locker rooms and I'd hold them in higher esteem. That's why I typically avoided Twitter altogether.
But after last year, when I stumbled across a site that kept up with various Twitter posts, mostly from Catholics, I began seeing that as a quick and pithy go-to myself to keep my finger on the pulse of what is happening today. Perhaps it is a good source for understanding the currents of thought in our modern age. If so, God help us.
Most of what I saw as I kept going there, however, was childish, snotty, stupid and false statements that could best be summed up with a simple '#I'm God/They're Hitler' template. Most of what I was seeing was nothing other than that. Children in adult garb just high-fiving each other for being what God hoped to be, as opposed to those stupid subhuman sinners over there.
Really. Be they Catholic apologists, doctors, professionals, published authors, professors - what I saw as often as not was rhetoric not worthy of my twelve year old. I wouldn't tolerate him having those attitudes and thinking that sort of approach to discourse was anything close to acceptable. Arrogance, pride, hatred and contempt - those are not what being human, much less Christian, is all about.
So I stopped. I won't say I'll never reference a Twitter post. Again, sometimes there can be rare good things, or humorous things, or pithy things that make me smile - when they're not banned by Twitter for failing to be appropriately leftist. And if someone shows me a Twitter post and I think it's important, I might talk about it. But I won't follow sites that keep constant updates with Twitter, since I consider it a cesspool of sin, and a near occasion of sin. I'd just as soon visit the ironically titled Friendly Atheist or other such pits of wretched than waste my time on something I don't even subscribe to that is worst than anything else in modern discourse.
Unfortunately Twitter, FB and the rest of social media does not in my opinion exactly help our society. We lay out our lives for all to see and for others to use what they know about us for nefarious reasons. And we volunteer this information! I never use FB except to see the Market Place and what's for sale in my area. Twitter had a silly name from the beginning and the reason for it's creation still escapes me. Why? So people follow you or feel important when it's passed along? Youtube is such a sad story. What could have been and was! a great idea is just another way for tech to control our society. Yes, all these things have some good but I think the sum of it all is not good. Today there is so much anxiety. We need to know what is happening every minute of everyday! We cannot get enough. If we email someone we have to keep checking our email for a reply every chance we get! We seem to have a need to know what is happening in Nepal or Texas even if it has nothing to do with us.
ReplyDeleteSome how I think this addiction to information and putting our lives out front for people to see was thoroughly researched by Tech and they saw a benefit to themselves with our addiction and they came up with Twitter, FB and a host of other media that took advantage of it. It probably started out as a way to earn revenue but I feel it was quickly realized how they could manipulate people through their apps and addiction.
I have a cell phone that is 10 years old. Tactile keyboard with most of the letters worn out I hate it. I never liked cell phones and only have it because my kids think I need it. I don't. When it breaks and it will soon, I break from using them again. Call me on the land line or write to me or better, visit me.
Sorry for the rant but people place way too much importance on social media than it deserves. Does it have any good attributes? Sure if used as such. Like getting info from people in Cuba or other parts of the world where there is no information coming forth. But it has wormed it's way into peoples lives(outside of business use) and I don't think that is a good thing.
Like so many things, we rob Peter to pay Paul where invention and technology are concerned. It's just that in recent years, it seems the paybacks are far outpacing the benefits. It's getting to the point where I think we are barely getting a bowl, much less a bowl of stew, for the birthrights we're being asked to give up.
DeleteI no longer have to go to the trouble of fooling myself. We’ve invented software to automate and industrialize the process, and then added a scoring system so that the masses will constantly bring it fresh fuel. It’s a system of rules with the emergent property of creating a continuous flow of crowd-sourced propaganda. We’ve gameified tribal bigotry.
ReplyDeleteThat seems familiar to me. I think I've seen that, or at least that argument, somewhere before. I would never say it started with Twitter. But the worst of our digital age seems to manifest itself most glaringly in the hellpit of Twitter.
DeleteI often think social media is like an inverse Magnificat. Instead of magnifying the Lord we magnify ourselves. (And ultimately the worst of ourselves really.) But what concerns me the most is when you read about the end times where Jesus describes the hardness of peoples' hearts and will he find faith on earth? When I think of social media that's what I think of. The hardening of hearts towards others. I, too, have never touched Twitter (Praise God!) but I'm stuck with FB as a necessary evil in my life currently. I engage much less than I used to though, because I see what it does to my own disposition of charity towards others at times. And the time I give it robs my children of their rightful claim on my attention. Probably one of my biggest regrets as a mom already. Wasted time on social media.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right. If it was just a place to say 'look at me, I'm good, I'm great, I'm God', it would be bad enough. Far too many sites and outlets become nothing more than a cult like gathering of people not even for the purpose of building themselves up, but to affirm each others' mutual hatred and contempt for an ever vaguely defined group of 'not us deplorables.' And since it's done behind the safety of the keyboard, there is nothing to lose, everything to gain for one's self-righteousness.
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