Much like every other kind of media, it's largely in your best interests to actively avoid the stuff targeted at creating a brand or a following or a mass audie

Much like every other kind of media, it's largely in your best interests to actively avoid the stuff targeted at creating a brand or a following or a mass audience. This is not snobbery, I definitely have plenty of "low" culture interests (we all do). But this kind of problem is also not unique or even particularly aggravated on Twitter or social media in general. Funnily enough I think it was the post-modernists like Baudrillard who first forcefully articulated this problem, but most of the time people talk about post-modernists as if they enjoy the fact that culture and politics have become dominated by symbols and simulacra. I've barely read anything on the topic, but that's my understanding. I should add the important caveat that mass non-symbolic politics is possible, so I'm not advocating some kind of blunt "anti mob and everything 'popular' is the mob" position. But wherever you find that, it probably won't be on Twitter.