The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

The old fashioned term for this is “politeness”

> Some people have the the ability to do it subconsciously, perhaps without even realising it.

As an LGBT latino software developer thanks for this. I was not even thinking about "diversity issue" when I wrote the the grandparent post but I'm not surprised it's the first thing that came up from a "Twitter Star".

Outrage always wins when it comes to attention.

The traditional news will never report on things that are going fine, they hyper focus on the (usually) bad exception. This incentive is to strong and perverse that they gladly misrepresent facts, dramatize them or even just make up stories.

When I discuss the day with my girlfriend, she won't tell me how the day largely went fine, the conversation is about that one colleague doing something wrong.

It's in all of us, we direct attention to deviations. Twitter exploits this to the very maximum on a scale not possible in the physical world.

The issue is not that people say outrageous things, they'll always do that. The real issue is that those views spread far and wide at breakneck speed, and thereby become popular or even culturally dominant.

Which is made possible by simple things like a retweet button and inflated follower counts. When you see somebody having 100K followers, you may think this is due to 100K people somehow searching for a person, browsing through lists of experts or having a connection with them in real life. Something you might call organic followers. That's not how it works at all. Based on engagement, after a particular threshold, it's a recommended account shown in front of many people, after that it snowballs and escalates.

And this is how you can have somebody "verified" and with 200K followers, that in real life is unemployed, has no particular useful expertise or insight, zero accomplishments, and absolutely thrive on the platform.

And it gets worse. These mid-tier influencers find each other. And if they align politically, they become an unstoppable force able to plaster the entire network with the dumbest of takes.

As this works so well, they become addicted to it. There can't be a quiet day, fresh outrage has to be constantly invented.

I think it goes beyond that, sure the traditional media did not help things but this started on Twitter.

Someone edited down a video of what happened and shared it. It was boosted either by bots or by unsuspecting people but it set off what can only be described as a witch hunt. This is of course not the first time this has happened, we have had things like Donglegate(https://arstechnica.com/staff/2013/03/donglegate-is-classic-...) and Shirtgate(https://time.com/3589392/comet-shirt-storm/). But the events seem to be getting bigger in magnitude, i.e. drawing in international media(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46935701) and more numerous(sorry no stats, only my attention).

You can not run a society on mobs. I am not sure if it is Twitters design, the speed of information, the need to feel like part of the in group and/or a combination of all and more that is leading to the formation of mobs but it is not healthy.

I also think there is some cultural values at play as well, where the number of Twitter followers, being an influencer, or just being self centered is seen as a positive thing.

Part of me thinks that it might be related to the gamification of everything, if I post more more(of the right thing) I get more likes, followers, retweets by celebrity. Rather than if I post clear concise or well thought out things. Quality over quantity as it were.

I've been on twitter for only a few weeks since there is an election coming up in my country and the parties have a rather big presence there and I have no other social media, and I like that I can remain pseudonymous (as opposed to Facebook which has a real name policy). I've also been following the Ukraine invasion on there as well...I don't know if it's just the content I'm following but boy, it's tiring.