Outrage Overload

There are opinions which an mistakable majority of people know are facts:

Oranges are the color of orange juice,
Water makes objects wet,
Known facts are not opinions,
And Twitter is useless for politics. Mostly.

What can Twitter definitively do? Promote the opinions of the already well known, and occasionally allow the unfamous to ascend into the public sky. It allows anyone to write on their own public billboard for free, with hope that someone else will read it. Which is why I joined the service in January 2016 to announce my articles for Awkward Mixture. Prior to January, I'd unconsciously avoided Twitter. There's little reason to look at it if you don't have a profile.

Google is packed with articles by those who have quit Twitter, (and some who have returned). There seem to be two main reasons for abandoning Twitter: its either a drain on an individual's time, or it's too angry. For those avoiding the political aspect, spending time on a frivolous topic such as sharing favorite movies or discussing the Bachelorette live, may not be considered a waste of time, even if it consumes it.

Rather, when time is spent in angry, exhausting arguments with anonymous strangers, (or even perusing the opinions which one agrees with), suddenly, an hour or two has passed, and the only result is strained eyes, a splitting headache, and a miserable mood.

The worst example of this is the cycle of outrage and shame relating to well known persons, sharing outrageous political opinions online (and occasionally offline). So constant is this spiral, because the number of semi-well known citizens, willing to embrace conspiracy theories, spout foul jokes, or denigrate our common humanity, is nearly limitless.

As a result, the names of Roseanne Barr, Kathy Lee Griffith, Corey Lewandowski, Melania Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, Peter Fonda, Ted Nugget, Samantha Bee, Michelle Wolf, Dinesh D'Souza, James Gunn, Joy Reid, and many more have (and will) become synonymous, for at least a minority of Twitter denizens, with disrepute.

These personalities, to differing degrees, committed a serious error of judgment. They all said something, that they believed, at the moment they wrote it, to be true. They didn't do it under duress, but under their own judgment, and most believe they did nothing wrong, even if the apologized for it.

What they all had in common was the casual use of incivility at the least, and cruel crudity at the worst. Some readers are undoubtedly appalled to see these names lumped together, but each (and many more) said something which provoked a virulent reaction, and it was a mistake for them to have said it, because it was (at the very least) crude and pointless.

Of course, other, random, normal people, post the same or worse daily, but their lack of profile protects them. But the posturing of the well known, these political celebrities, invokes the ire of the partisan mob for their racist, sexist, threatening, disgusting, and dangerous comments.

Examining Twitter, one of the recent debates focused on James Gunn, Mike Cernovich, a person who is either a prophet or an abomination, and is defiantly a male supremacy advocate, found and published 10 year old tweets of Gunn's after Gunn criticized Mark Duplass for praising conservative pundit Ben Shapiro. The prompt response to Disney's firing of Gunn was the wild finger pointing, the yes, buts, and the calls of hypocrisy. In minutes the insatiable mob of Twitter attempted to place the blame on Cernovich, Johnny Depp, John Lassiter, Logan Paul, Patton Oswalt, Michael Ian Black, Roy Moore, and because it's Twitter, (and I kid you not), Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland as somehow equal to or worse.

Twitter encourages this behavior. They could have developed a tool for discussion, or problem solving. Instead, the developers sought prominence over substance, its community became a mirror of its desire. In the realm of politics, Twitter users employ a few techniques to achieve prominence: the angry retort, the passive aggressive response, and the witty reply.

These three tools are the best means of earning the attention of others. Twitter is often compared to a game, where the only goal is to secure more followers. More followers, a larger platform, which broadens one's reach to acquire more viewers. Wit and Wrath draw the eye more powerfully than warmth, and this truth isn't confined to Tweets, but profiles. These mini, personal portraits are composed of esprit and emotion, which rivals individual messages. Even any attempt to reject wit becomes a source of cleverness as well. Resistance to wit is a posture, an impossibility, except for the inept.

Those incapable of cleverness, or anti-wit, assign labels. #TheResistance, #StillwithHer, #MAGA, #TrumpTrain, #TheStorm, as if people want to voluntarily box themselves into containers for others to judge.

In politics there is no escape. Two of my favorite posters, @petersagal, and @ggreenwald, are locked in pointless political confrontations. But it seems as if this behavior is beneficial for one's Twitter profile, if not one's writing, or sanity. The amount of content created by writers, celebrities, and anonymous users is astounding, and seems to be more important than their regular job. It's possible this whole article is expressing my inability to understand Twitter. To love the service, some users claim one needs to immerse themselves in the community, posting and replay dozens of times a day. The sighs of relief, offered by those who escape the grind, and the despairing anger of those who don't dispute this assertion.

If there's an example of politics done well on Twitter, avoiding the pitfalls of outrage, sarcasm, yelling fruitlessly into the void, and snark, then my award for best Twitter Users would be @NateSilver538 and especially @ForecasterEnten formerly of 538, and now an analyst for CNN. Some aspect of their profession, their use of mathematics and statistics, alleviates the otherwise abrasive nature of the medium.

For those readers who follow the political articles. I've found that I can keep a schedule best, if I'm writing a series. So expect another article or two along this line.

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