Ask A Genius 855: Social Media and Twitter Going to Shit
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2023/08/28
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You wanted to talk about social media or specifically Twitter going to shit. What’s up?
Rick Rosner: So, Musk took over Twitter maybe eight months ago. Things already weren’t great across social media and on Twitter because a significant percentage of social media users have either been driven a little crazy or have been encouraged to let their worst racist trolly selves run free by the anonymous nature of social media, not entirely anonymous but you’re not face to face with actual people and your identity is more or less masked and you can just be a bastard. People don’t call people bastards anymore which I think is kind of a PC thing or a son of a bitch; anything like that is a term that devalues people based on their paternity. Those terms don’t get used much anymore.
So, the nature of social media makes people bastards and active sci ops like out of Russia for instance, which spent 300 million across about eight years destabilizing western governments via propaganda on social media. So, you have people who hate western governments and actively trying to make people crazy. So, anyway people are increasingly asshole-ish and then Musk who has been revealed to be kind of an a-hole, took over Twitter and now it’s supposed to be called X but everybody still calls it Twitter. He says he’s for free, unfettered speech but he’s really kind of right wing-y and he welcomed back a bunch of people spreading misinformation and right-wing hate. So, Twitter is super awful and I would venture that I’m semi addicted to Twitter and probably part of the addiction is that I feel like by being hateful to the people I hate, I feel like I might be doing good by saying don’t vote for Republicans.
I could argue that I am doing good because I’ve got a certain amount of reach on Twitter and if my messaging makes a few hundred people get out and vote who wouldn’t otherwise have voted, that’s more than I could have accomplished by filling out postcards urging people to go out and vote or making phone calls. I do give little teeny amounts of money to political organizations to help them get out the vote but I’m guessing that me fucking around on Twitter is more effective than any of the other things I might do. In any case, probably somewhat addicted where I will spend time on Twitter that I should spend writing other stuff; the stuff that I could eventually get paid for writing.
To sum up, the terribleness of Twitter that makes you feel like you’re in a dire conflict because the people you’re arguing with seems so horrible that were they to prevail politically, the country would be fucked. Did you hear about the shooting at Dollar General store by a guy with swastikas on his AR-15?
Jacobsen: No.
Rosner: A guy, your standard racist incel, tried to shoot up a historically black college and security stopped him and so he just went to the Dollar General; this is down in Florida and shot a bunch of people and then shot himself. This is called stochastic terrorism. There a bunch of right-wing motherfuckers who engage in hate speech which causes lunatics to go on shooting sprees. That’s part of what makes Twitter addictive; the idea that you’re fighting the hate speech people and that actual stuff is at stake. That’s all I have on now. I mean it’s partly a delusion and partly not. Any comments or questions?
Jacobsen: No, that should be just fine.
[Recording End]
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