It is so strange to look at Twitter after being mostly on Mastodon for a few days.
The anger of it all sticks out so much more. The constant rage and pain of it. It radiates from almost every tweet.
Some of the anger is a bit pointless, like "right wing media person said thing".
Plenty of it is justified – about the government, society, personal living situations, low level gripes.
But anger is the overriding emotion. Any idea discussed is phrased as a rebuke to some opponent of said idea, real or imaginary.
I'm conflicted because we obviously live in a system that requires daily opposition.
But that's slid too far into spending time and energy trying to rhetorically one-up that system's mid-level functionaries, or often just howling into voids.
@tomw I think Twitter leads people to waste time shouting into the void or preaching to the choir or arguing with trolls and propagandists. It's the illusion of making a difference when actually there are better ways. Meanwhile, being on Twitter has a negative impact on people due to the constant flow of rage and controversy.
@aristeon Yes, people feel like they are doing something useful by getting angry with someone who says something outrageous, but a lot of these people are professional trolls who in turn owe their whole media position to that 'engagement'. The result is that you are presented with a never-ending parade of pantomime villains to boo at, and the more you boo the more powerful they become.
