A pandemic lockdown is probably not the best time to consider turning off Twitter for good yet here I am considering just that.
I also admit at the outset that Iâll probably failâŠ
Even when I try not to read Twitter, my Twitter shortcut is the first thing I reach for whenever I open my browser. Iâve deleted that shortcut countless times, yet it always reappears without my apparent intervention. Iâve tried to give myself Twitter rules, but I always break them. I just love reading about the people I follow. I like reading their tweets about the ordinary stuff of their lives. From my pretty lonely spot behind his keyboard, Twitter gives me a sense of living in a bigger world.
And if only it were just that, Iâd be happy. The problem is all the other stuffâŠ
Itâs easy to describe the worst of it. We all know what it looks like. For me, itâs the anti-science Trumpian bollocks that itâs impossible to escape. Often, itâs being quoted simply to debunk it, but the effect is the same. Itâs like mental indigestion where the brain is in a constant state of churn. I canât decide if itâs something that social media has created or something thatâs always been with us but which weâre only seeing through the lens of Twitter and Facebook. Is this that very same war against ignorance that Galileo witnessed at first hand, that saw Einstein flee Europe, and now turns epidemiologists into figures of public hate?
I usually avoid war analogies â or, at least, the Second World War â but war seems right. These are individual battles we fight but the reality is a prolonged conflict between two completely hostile ideologies. To frame it crudely but fairly: itâs the war between feeling and reason that probably as old as we are; the difference between standing upright and walking on all fours.
Thereâs no reason for those of us on the science side to doubt our arguments. The world is demonstrably better in many respects, even if the politicians sometimes let us down. Tomorrow SpaceX aims to fly two astronauts to the International Space Station. Whatever the outcome, the company have already reached some impressive milestones which we should celebrate. Itâs should not be diminished by the reality of how that came about, through the rise of Paypal (Elon Muskâs first big payday) and on to the bigger problems we have with oversized corporate capitalism.
Yet, unfortunately, there are too many entirely reasonable people that look on our world and think we have problems with our enlightenment values. Most of Twitterâs nonsense can be ignored completely but the worst of it is when it creeps into places where youâd think people have more sense. It produces a scepticism towards science that isnât entirely superstitious but itâs leaning that way. These are the people who, deep down, desperately want the validation that religion would give them even if they canât entirely find it within themselves to go that far. They instead gloat a little in those moments whenever they think that science has failed. âOh, see, science doesnât have all the answers,â theyâll say before reaching for some pseudo-religious take on the scientific method. These people end up as the half-believers; those that take the sceptical nature of science to turn it against itself. They become anti-vaxxers or herd-immunisers, people who pick and choose the science where it fits their political, social, or emotional narrative.
The mistake they make is that they donât fully understand what science properly is. They assume itâs another endpoint like religion. They treat it as the full stop beyond which they can stop searching for answers. For them, perhaps, replacing âanswersâ with ongoing hypothesising is too exhausting. Yet if they gave science more attention, they might begin to see how even science can encompass a religious sensibility, closer to deism than atheism. If theyâd stop thinking of âGodâ (or gods) as some divine will thatâs somehow sentient and external to them, they might begin to see that God could quite simply be the organising rules of the universe. How much more deep and complex is that theology compared to apples in Eden, flaming swords, or cosmic eggs.
It might seem like Iâve strayed from where I began but not really. What I dislike most about Twitter is the absolute moral or factual clarity that people display. Thereâs never much humility about problems and this is as true about those on the left as it is about those on the right. The result is a bullying schoolyard mentality, of snide remarks, crap jokes, and bitter verdicts. Itâs rarely about the process of being open-minded, sceptical, and interested in the truth. Itâs all about endpoints: verdicts rendered, judgements made, and loyalty decided.
I donât like to be told what to think. I like to think, which, perhaps, why itâs all so bloody exhausting.
That’s more like it! đ This is actually something I’ve been thinking about alot recently. Not quitting Twitter, I still love it and have an ability to (usually) just scroll past things that I can’t be bothered with. About the internet as a whole. I saw on Twitter (ironically!) somebody I follow ask ‘does anybody else miss the old internet?’ And I realised that yes I do, terribly. Twitter isn’t the disease, it’s a symptom. On the old net you had to know where things were. You had to speak a sort of different language. It was an escape from reality….and then…the normals came and made it an Extension of reality. I’ve never really grasped real world comparisons eg ‘you wouldn’t say that to somebody in real life!’ Well no you probably wouldn’t but also wouldn’t be talking to some nothern chap any other way! Stick with Twitter its also a place where you find ideas and like minded people. Itll improve (slightly) when people have more than on subject to argue about.
Ah, the “old internet”. Yes, I do! Oddly, it’s partly what I’ve been doing whilst avoiding Twitter the last few days. Youtube’s tech channels have given me a lot of comfort, especially watching people splashing liquid nitrogen around as they overclock PCs.
I also miss a world where you had to have a certain degree of technical mastery to get in. Once they opened it up to everybody, it went from being like a bigger version of your local computer club to an echo chamber where there’s remarkably little debate. It’s why I appreciated your challenge to my Cummings piece. It feels like a debate. Twitter feels too settled. You pick a side and man the barricades. And perhaps that’s what’s most shocking… How people can be so easily distracted by bright shiny objects. I have no intention to really quit it but the Cummings story has really rattled me. Whenever I take a look I just want to shout: CAN WE PLEASE GO BACK TO TAKING THIS VIRUS SERIOUSLY?