Breaking Up With Twitter...

...and having a fling with SubStack.

So, Twitter is a cesspool. Who knew? Yes, OK, you all did, especially those of you who have been telling me to get off it for my own sake for years.

But it’s a shame. Because it didn’t used to be like this. At the beginning of our relationship, twelve years ago, Twitter and I were good together. So good, that I argued that anybody who hated Twitter was just doing it wrong. In fact, I said:

I am a staunch defender of Twitter and its potential for productive conversation with people who can hold very different views. It provides the opportunity to broaden one’s own knowledge and perspective. This runs counter to common arguments that Twitter is a collection of echo-chambers and a hostile hunting-ground for ideological extremists and psychologically-damaged, rage-filled trolls.

On the contrary, I thought, Twitter provided a great resource to connect with all kinds of people and was a positive good for clarifying one’s thinking. It incentivised people to think through their arguments and respond to what was actually being said. The very format made people prone to verbosity condense each point succinctly to fit it into a tweet. Having a good idea of who might see one’s tweet and how they might object encouraged the healthy habit of thinking of counterarguments while making arguments and disconfirming evidence while presenting confirming evidence. And it simply wasn’t possible for anybody to deliberately miss the point, as they necessarily had to reply to a single concise point at a time. What could be better? Having all one’s teeth pulled out without anaesthetic, as it turns out.

So, I now hate Twitter. Does that mean I was doing it wrong?

Yes, absolutely. I was repeatedly trying to have honest conversations with dishonest people and thinking that if I just explained what I meant really clearly one more time, the mob would get it and stop claiming it was whatever horrible thing they wanted to argue with that day. And then, when, of course, they didn’t, rather than thinking there was something wrong with them, and relaxing with a good book, I’d lie awake half the night wondering if they were right and I really did want to set fire to puppies and push old ladies under buses.

So, does this mean Twitter really is a hostile hunting-ground for ideological extremists and psychologically-damaged, rage-filled trolls?

Yes, it really does. Well, OK, no, it doesn’t. The vast majority of people who engaged with me did so positively, honestly, having easily comprehended what I had actually said. But it does not feel like that when there are enough of the psychologically damaged, rage-filled trolls around. The negative experiences are the ones that stick with me. And this is very normal. We do remember the abusive smear-merchants more than the polite, honest people. But exposing oneself to too much of that can so easily lead to cynicism, despair of humanity and the false belief that everybody who holds an opposing view is evil.

So, yes, people who have been saying for years that social media is terrible for productive conversation and brings out the worst in people while damaging their mental health, relationships, reading comprehension, reasoning abilities, concentration and peace of mind and gives them a distorted view of the world. I concede that you are correct. We big brained apes with enough intelligence to be spectacularly stupid do not typically function well in this novel environment. Not if we want to talk about politics, culture and how create a more just society, anyway.

I have no idea how to fix this. Politely suggesting people try to be marginally less insane certainly hasn’t helped. Maybe the Council for Responsible Social Media will be able to make some positive changes? I shall keep my eye on it. Jonathan Haidt is part of it, which bodes well. Following a day in which one particularly nasty clique was yet again failing to understand that people with different brains can have different ideas and are only responsible for their own and another was insisting I am a paedophile apologist because I took my kid to the pantomime even though it has a dame in it (yes, seriously), I have deactivated my Twitter account. I intend to leave it that way most of the time.

SubStack, you are now the rebound outlet for all the overflowings of my brain. I think it is only fair to be honest with you. I have just got out of a toxic relationship with my last one after going back to it even after I swore I never would. It may take me some time to trust. And yet, you have been sitting here waiting patiently for me to come back, haven’t you? Reminding me I don’t have to roll around in the muck of Twitter, but can sit here peacefully with you taking my time to set my thoughts down unmolested by the outrage-merchants, the point-missers, the nit-pickers, the misrepresenters, the abusive, the insane, the illiterate and those odd people who think I might not have noticed I am fat and would like to be made aware of it.

Ok, let’s give this a go. I intend to be quite informal with you. Whenever I would have written a thread, I shall instead write a short, spontaneous essay here and just post it. I shall leave comments open and also share to Twitter but not hang around there. Then, I can reply to any comment or criticism that is thoughtful, relevant, interesting, coherent and appears to have been written by somebody who has both read the essay and is not insane.

I also have essays series planned that will be more formal, detailed and citation-filled. I intend to inflict upon you my argument for a form of gender studies that incorporates biology, psychology and sociology and suggest why this might be more helpful than either blank slatism or gender essentialism. I feel sure it must be possible to study the sexually reproducing species that we are without pathologising either sex, denying any demonstrable realities, moralising about things that don’t need moralising about or relying upon the theories of a certain queer theorist who is so radically skeptical of the ability of language to convey meaning that she doesn’t even try.

I will do my best to convince you that discourse analysis is not nearly as tedious as it sounds and that it is, in fact, something that humans are programmed to do and do all the time. Whether we do it well or not is an entirely different matter and quite an important one. I will also attempt to finally get together the convoluted argument I have been trying to make about how concepts in schema therapy can help us to understand why different ideological groups often seem to be looking at entirely different worlds. If I am feeling particularly sadistic, I may even go on about pockets of Anglo-Saxon paganism that co-existed alongside Augustinian Christianity in rural parts of England in the 10th century and that, while they may seem to conceptualise masculinity and femininity in opposing ways at first glance, if you look closer you see how similar their models actually are. But mostly, I will probably talk about how people are being wrong on the internet.

In between all this, I shall have a wander round here and see what other people are talking about. Thank you for having me, SubStack. I will try not to talk about my ex too much.

Photo by Rumman Amin on Unsplash