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The Little Blue Bird Is Pooping On All Of Us
Why Twitter Is A Horrible Place For Discourse
It’s a widely held belief that the technology we use is completely neutral. That it’s not about the technology, but simply how we use it. Naturally, from this premise people come to the conclusion that the way people behaviour on Twitter is simply how humanity truly is.
If people are mean, rude, horrible, snarky, sarcastic and horrible on Twitter, it must mean that people are secretly like this in the real world too. After all, technology is neutral, right?
Wrong. Technology is not neutral. And this is one of the most widely held misconceptions about technologies like social media.
We behave differently depending on the method we use to communicate. The medium we use to communicate changes how we communicate.
We communicate differently over the phone than we do face to face. We communicate differently on a Zoom call than we do through Whatsapp messages. And we communicate differently in the Medium comments section than we do while sending an email.
As Marshall Mcluhan famously taught us: “The Medium Is The Message”.
Twitter in particular is a platform that causes us to become more hostile, snarky, sarcastic, mean, unconscious, more bold and…
