3 ms·

People are upset at a product reviewer for reviewing a product. Classic example of why "Person On Twitter Is Angry" being considered newsworthy, or even faintl

People are upset at a product reviewer for reviewing a product. Classic example of why "Person On Twitter Is Angry" being considered newsworthy, or even faintly noteworthy, is one the worst things that has happened to modern discourse.

eBombzor 3y ago
Yep. Everything is extreme these days.
sph 3y ago
I mostly blame people who take the angry Twittersphere to share it elsewhere, making it spread. Journalists of any niche are particularly good at it, and in this case the author. I don't read Twitter, because I do not care of its drama, but the author did its best to spread it and stoke the fires thanks to their blog.
- Intralexical 3y ago
  Eh. I blame Twitter. They didn't have to take something dumb that should have been left to immediate obscurity, and show it to thousands of people in the first place as if it had any authority. But clearly, they gained some reach and revenue by doing so, or else we wouldn't be talking about it. Thanks to the character limit (no longer technical, but still cultural) and the algorithmic feeds, the "discourse" on Twitter is entirely synthetic. In real life, the equivalent would be like if somebody were to interrupt you every five seconds, then take the various sentence fragments you managed to get out in between, and stitched that together with random other sentence fragments from hundreds of strangers in a grotesque attempt to manufacture a coherent interaction. Oh, and everybody's screaming all the time, all at once, of course, and the messages you try to say about the Blottinghamville Games Club keep being sent to members of Bunny Murderers for National Unity, and vice versa… All while the giant blue bird-thing keeps trying to tell you about its sponsors. And yet, this mutilation of human thought and conversation itself is presented as if it's just a venue for normal discussions. It's not; The "interactions" on Twitter are interrupted, chopped up, and stitched together. I think it preys, basically on our social instincts, on the desire to assume good faith and perceive an organic conversation happening because it tries really hard to make that seem like the case. Especially given that I'm not sure there's really any comparable dynamic that's ever existed before in all of human history, I don't know how useful it is to blame individuals for falling for that. Twitter monetized a random message and amplified it as if it's important, so the author of the linked article responded, because that's what you do if you assume good faith when somebody else presents something as important… Though at this point we should probably know better.

eBombzor 3y ago

Yep. Everything is extreme these days.

sph 3y ago

I mostly blame people who take the angry Twittersphere to share it elsewhere, making it spread. Journalists of any niche are particularly good at it, and in this case the author. I don't read Twitter, because I do not care of its drama, but the author did its best to spread it and stoke the fires thanks to their blog.

Intralexical 3y ago
Eh. I blame Twitter. They didn't have to take something dumb that should have been left to immediate obscurity, and show it to thousands of people in the first place as if it had any authority. But clearly, they gained some reach and revenue by doing so, or else we wouldn't be talking about it. Thanks to the character limit (no longer technical, but still cultural) and the algorithmic feeds, the "discourse" on Twitter is entirely synthetic. In real life, the equivalent would be like if somebody were to interrupt you every five seconds, then take the various sentence fragments you managed to get out in between, and stitched that together with random other sentence fragments from hundreds of strangers in a grotesque attempt to manufacture a coherent interaction. Oh, and everybody's screaming all the time, all at once, of course, and the messages you try to say about the Blottinghamville Games Club keep being sent to members of Bunny Murderers for National Unity, and vice versa… All while the giant blue bird-thing keeps trying to tell you about its sponsors. And yet, this mutilation of human thought and conversation itself is presented as if it's just a venue for normal discussions. It's not; The "interactions" on Twitter are interrupted, chopped up, and stitched together. I think it preys, basically on our social instincts, on the desire to assume good faith and perceive an organic conversation happening because it tries really hard to make that seem like the case. Especially given that I'm not sure there's really any comparable dynamic that's ever existed before in all of human history, I don't know how useful it is to blame individuals for falling for that. Twitter monetized a random message and amplified it as if it's important, so the author of the linked article responded, because that's what you do if you assume good faith when somebody else presents something as important… Though at this point we should probably know better.