The first Thoughtful Thursday has me thinking – Twitter is not real life. And yes, it does need to be said.
This topic has been playing on my mind for a while now. Open Twitter and what do you see? Another actor has been fired for a joke made 10 years ago, this person is being canceled, theres another 3 genders and heres yet another thing to be completely and blindly, outraged about. Just like the nightly news, good news does not encourage Twitter interaction…
But step back from it all. Step back from the vocal minority yelling about something, put down your phone and you’ll notice something – people in real life are much friendlier, much happier and much easier to get along with. Everything that is causing outrage on Twitter simply doesn’t really matter. In the grand scheme of things, those things are just not important. They are very much problems of the first world.
The world is a lot better than Twitter makes it out to be. I even tweeted how Twitter was not real life, and was promptly replied to with “The world is so much worse”. With that type of thinking, is there even any point arguing? You see what you want to see. And if you’ve chosen to only see the bad, you’ll never see the good. And I bet the threshold for bad has been lowered extremely.
I say this as a pretty heavy Twitter user. I have been pulled into arguments, he-said-she-said, why-am-I-blocked and even a bit of Twitter bullying – and in all cases, the number one thing I do is to put my phone down. Just walk away. In 20 minutes its all over anyways, and the mob has moved on to the next big, “bad” thing to hate.
Spend too much on Twitter and you’ll come away with some twisted thoughts on how the world is out to oppress you, or some such nonsense. The world is much more friendly, more easy going, and easier to get along with. All it takes is stepping out of your bubble to see this. The bubble can be anything from your home, to your country, to your friends. But step out, and you’ll be rewarded a hundredfold.
As a reflection of our society, I think Twitter has a tendency to show the worst. But it can also show the best. There are so many little positive stories on Twitter – someone just whispering into the void “Today I got a promotion” or “She said yes”. Little moments like that, that don’t draw the CNN’s and the Twitter Moments crowd, but still – moments of pure joy being shared with the world, and who ever will listen.
Twitter can be a force for good. Its just too bad a lot of people use it for hate and anger. And about such little things too. If Twitter went down tomorrow and never came back, well I don’t exactly see that as a bad thing…
2 Comments
Mario · July 12, 2019 at 18:02
Related question (possibly one for another blog post?). You say in the post that you’re a “heavy twitter user”. If there’s so much negativity on it that you need to put it down and step away, why use it so much? I’d be very interested in reading a post about why you like/use Twitter.
Kyle · July 12, 2019 at 18:52
Fantastic question – I use Twitter to keep up with people, and to spill my thoughts. Spending a lot of time on the platform shows you all the sides of it, and the more you spend, the more you see the ‘darker corners’ so to speak. And why do I use it so much? Not many other platforms allow you the freedom to rattle off something funny you just saw, or a dream you had, or a random thought and then forget about it. I think I could do a post on why I like the idea of Twitter over its implementation. Thanks for your comment 🙂
Comments are closed.