25% of Americans sometimes tweet? That seems very high. I only know a couple of people who use Twitter...
I had one ten years ago when I was a teenager. I wonder if I'm part of that "sometimes tweets" category.
The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
141–150 of 784 posts
Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
#142The most active social media users are usually people lacking in real life. Think about it, if you have a great job, a great partner and a great life, are you on Twitter arguing 20 to 30 hours a week. The type of person to argue with strangers all day has none of the above. It's also a matter of recognizing how insignificant we all are. No one cares what I think. Hopefully no one ever will. I do want to create games…
This feels oddly specific. I'm not sure why you can't engage on Twitter and still not be "lacking in real life." Who even gets to define "real life?" And while I'm sure some people spend 20-30 hours per week on Twitter I'm guessing it's such a small percentage of the world that it might as well be statistically insignificant.
At the very least is a workable hypothesis. To be active on Twitter one needs the right personality, which means being very upset when other people reply/engage or being indifferent and playing one of the games adults are playing. In the first case, the person is not able to avoid engaging. In the second case, they engage because they have the usual "motives".
Twitter is a very dangerous social media. I consider myself a wordly and experienced person, but I admit I tend to over-value what is shared on Twitter (momentarily, because I look back occasionally at bookmarks and I have very little or no memories of those tweets or I cannot understand why I bookmarked them). I over-value (and not properly value) because I have no clue who is the person who's tweeting (case 1, why should I listen to them? Who are they? Would the same observation "hold" is a face to face conversation?) or I know them/they are public figures (case 2), and they are playing a game of popularity or relevance in which I am, as part of the audience, the sucker.
Just to make an example, the other day someone wrote that "the US should ramp up oil production now". I read it and I told myself "Ok". A reply-guy replied "what are you talking about, this is not like software, when you can "easily" scale up the number of servers". And I thought, man, I was really not thinking, my first reaction when reading a twitter should be "this is bs, who is this person, where is the competence coming from, what it the game they are playing now", but it was not my first reaction, which was instead of passive acceptance. Dangerous game.
Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
#143I don't engage on Twitter out of fear. I sometimes see posts that I like and want to retweet but I don't because it means I'm endorsing everything the author has ever said or ever will say. It's not worth the risk. People in my demographic face significant exposure to "cancelling" or ambushing for wrongthink. So it's best for me to avoid it entirely.
You’re getting cancelled for your views? Which views are those, exactly?
Your comment implies that surely any cancellation of someone for their views must be justifiable.
That's an insane premise, but even if we presume it to be true, it still doesn't cover the case of _future_ cancellation when someone finds your tweets 10 years later and decides they aged like milk.
There are many comments I would have made 5-10 years ago, that I wouldn't make today. Sure, that's mostly due to maturity, but I've also adjusted my self-filter to account for a changing environment and audience.
At this point, I write all political comments under pseudonyms. It's not because I'm scared of getting cancelled — on the contrary, I wish I could argue my positions from my real name. But there is a lot of risk, for little benefit – I'm not a "journalist" or blogger or anyone with a career that depends on my political viewpoints. So why bother?
In general, online political comments gain me nothing, and there is no way to predict how those comments might look in a week, month, or even years from now. I do still write plenty of them, under pseudonyms (like this one), but it's more of a hobby to practice my writing. But I'm also not ashamed of anything I've written under any of the accounts – I would gladly defend all my opinions in person (to those close to me, who already know my feelings, and – btw, because they're sane – have never "cancelled" me).
Who knows, maybe one day I'll even tweet my pseudonym usernames so I can show everyone how right I was five years ago.
Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
#144I don't engage on Twitter out of fear. I sometimes see posts that I like and want to retweet but I don't because it means I'm endorsing everything the author has ever said or ever will say. It's not worth the risk. People in my demographic face significant exposure to "cancelling" or ambushing for wrongthink. So it's best for me to avoid it entirely.
I post publicly on forums with my real name and don’t endorse everything I have said. Just evict such absolutist moral nonsense people from your life and don’t allow them to control you. When you see them do it to others, block them. It’s exactly the same thing as when it was a certain sort of church people controlling much of society with fear of “canceling” which was just done by different people with different mea…
When you get “canceled”, it doesn’t matter who you’ve personally “evicted” or not. If people with power over you either agree with the absolutists or are afraid of offending them, you’re going to have a bad time.
Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
#145I don't engage on Twitter out of fear. I sometimes see posts that I like and want to retweet but I don't because it means I'm endorsing everything the author has ever said or ever will say. It's not worth the risk. People in my demographic face significant exposure to "cancelling" or ambushing for wrongthink. So it's best for me to avoid it entirely.
>People in my demographic face significant exposure to "cancelling" or ambushing for wrongthink. I don't use Twitter or pretty much say anything publicly for the same reason, but note that this is definitely a risk for people of all demographics.
Totally agree, being attacked for your viewpoint used to be just a problem for minority viewpoints/identities. But now even those who were previously safe are seeing increasing risk in backlashes.
We have gone from silencing the minority to silencing the majority, this is terrible, but silver lining is that now maybe more people are invested in solving the problem.
Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
#146I tried being a Twitter user for a bit last year, mostly because a lot of engineers I admire use it to communicate about interesting topics and also their work. But after a while, I realized even they will pollute my feed with politically divisive topics, whether it be from them retweeting something, or liking a tweet, or even entering into the fray themselves -- Twitter will find a way to get me to see it. For a whi…
One of my pet theories for why social media is such a cesspool is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else.
If I play boardgames with Sue, that's enough. We meet, enjoy a beer and play some Catan and go our separate ways. That's a fine relationship.
If I follow Sue on social media, now I know her politics, religion, sex life, drug usage, opinions on every little thing.. and frankly, I don't care or want to. I'm happy just playing some Catan once in a while.
Historically you didn't need to know everything about everyone. Your friends will always have opinions or lifestyles you will find disagreeable - that is the nature of human existence.
Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms, lgbtq, etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in public or polite company.
My $0.02 is that it's easier to fall back to rules of polite conversation than fix our compulsive need for agreement.
Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
#147I got my twitter account MyfirstnameMylastname somewhere early in the site's existence, probably around 2009. But never really got the appeal of Twitter so I never used it for anything, I'd check it once every six months or so.
I eventually learned I share a name with a tech journalist who is very active on Twitter, and occasionally I would get tagged instead instead of him. Every time, I would respond with the Navy Seal Copypasta, broken into eight twitter sized parts. Eventually they banned me for this.
And thus ended my Twitter adventure for good.
Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter is a massively multiplayer video game that is culturally overvalued and entrenched because journalism and other influential fields got sucked in. It is absolutely insane that it is taken so seriously. It's also super weird that everyone is so addicted to this game they play it out in public. To illustrate this: imagine your ideal day. It could be on vacation, or hanging out at home, anywhere really. The key:…
I saw a post once for a journalism job with local media here. 4-6 articles a day. Not sure how you could do that job without Twitter.
Sing up for all the companies that provide press releases? Not sure if that is enough though...
Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s not possible. People take offense at everything. Or they will tomorrow. That’s the real problem: the standards of “good” and “decent” shift from time to time. What is fine today may get you canceled tomorrow. Thus, it is not safe to put your opinions out there in any form that could come back to bite you. If you want to take that risk, fine. But do not pretend that it is safe.
It really isn't changing that much though. Maybe if you think someone might be offended by what you say in 10 years, maybe don't say it now. It's probably offensive now
Are there any of your own beliefs which you don't express because they might be considered offensive in the future?
Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
#150This was never new. Only about 1 in 5 Americans even use Twitter [1].
1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/02/10-facts-ab...