If you’re like me, you’ve had just about enough of the weird fog and fug that has become social media—those personal-information-devouring echo chambers of sound and fury signifying nothing. An hour spent on Twitter is an hour wasted to disorientation and mob reasoning as participants, lodged in their respective echo chambers, expose themselves to the lightning-fast dissemination of bad information, ugly snark, and bellicosity which many users feed upon like sharks to chum. They grow more and more aggressive with each swallow until they finally must turn upon another with jaws wide open and eyes rolled back, all-unseeing, intent only on the bite and the bloody kill.
Facebook is only marginally better, but that’s likely because it doesn’t move at the same speed.
It wasn’t always like this. Seven or eight years ago, one could sign into Twitter with the same warm intention one might feel when entering a local Irish pub; one could anticipate spending an hour or two in lively conversation (and perhaps even a vigorous “cyber brawl” within an exchange of ideas) and still part friends til next time. Around 2014, though, in the lead up to the 2016 elections, that began to change. Now, the place is toxic and too often even a well-intentioned discussion begun in good faith can quickly devolve into a mad feeding frenzy, leaving everyone wounded and no one the better.
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