On blissful ignorance of Twitter trends, controversies, beefs, and general goings-on
Being off Twitter continues to be good for my soul as well as my mind, and one of the benefits I'm realizing is the ignorance that comes as a byproduct. By which I mean, ignorance not in general or of good things but of that which it is not beneficial to know.
When you're on Twitter, you notice what is "trending." This micro-targeted algorithmic function shapes your experience of the website, the news, the culture, and the world. Even if it were simply a reflection of what people were tweeting about the most, it would still be random, passing, and mass-generated. Who cares what is trending at any one moment?
More important, based on the accounts one follows, there is always some tempest in a teacup brewing somewhere or other. A controversy, an argument, a flame war, a personal beef: whatever its nature, the brouhaha exerts a kind of gravitational pull, sucking us poor online plebs into its orbit. And because Twitter is the id unvarnished, the kerfuffle in question is usually nasty, brutish, and unedifying. Worst of all, this tiny little momentary conflict warps one's mind, as if anyone cares except the smallest of online sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-"communities." For writers, journalists and academics above all, these Twitter battles start to take up residence in the skull, as if they were not only real but vital and important. Articles and essays are written about them; sometimes they are deployed (with earnest soberness) as a synecdoche for cultural skirmishes to which they bear only the most tangential, and certainly no causal, relationship.
As it turns out, when you are ignorant of such things, they cease in any way to weigh down one's mind, because they might as well not have happened. (If a tweet is dunked on but no one sees it, did the dunking really occur?) And this is all to the good, because 99.9% of the time, what happens on Twitter (a) stays on Twitter and (b) has no consequences—at least for us ordinary folks—in the real world. Naturally, I'm excluding e.g. tweets by the President or e.g. tweets that will get one fired. (Though those examples are just more reasons not to be on Twitter: I suppose if all such reasons were written down even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.) What I mean is: The kind of seemingly intellectually interesting tweet-threads and Twitter-arguments are almost never (possibly never-never) worth attending to in the moment.
Why? First, because they're usually stillborn: best not to have read them in the first place; there is always a better use of one's time. Second, because, although they feel like they are setting the terms of this or that debate, they are typically divorced from said debate, or merely symptoms of it, or just reflections of it: but in most cases, not where the real action is happening. Third, because if they're interesting enough—possibly even debate-setting enough—their author will publish them in an article or suchlike that will render redundant the original source of the haphazard thoughts that are now well organized and digestible in an orderly sequence of thought. Fourth and finally, because if a tweet or thread is significant enough (this is the .01% leftover from above), someone will publish about it and make known to the rest of us why it is (or, as the case may be, is actually not) important. In this last case, there is a minor justification for journalists not to delete their Twitter accounts; though the reasons for deletion are still strong, they can justify their use of the evil website (or at least spending time on it: one can read tweets without an account). For the rest of us, we can find out what happened on the hellscape that is Twitter in the same way we get the rest of our news: from reputable, established outlets. And not by what's trending at any one moment.
For writers and academics, the resulting rewards are incomparable. The time-honored and irrefutable wisdom not to read one's mentions—corrupting the mind, as it does, and sabotaging good writing—turns out to have broader application. Don't just avoid reading your mentions. Don't have mentions to read in the first place.
When you're on Twitter, you notice what is "trending." This micro-targeted algorithmic function shapes your experience of the website, the news, the culture, and the world. Even if it were simply a reflection of what people were tweeting about the most, it would still be random, passing, and mass-generated. Who cares what is trending at any one moment?
More important, based on the accounts one follows, there is always some tempest in a teacup brewing somewhere or other. A controversy, an argument, a flame war, a personal beef: whatever its nature, the brouhaha exerts a kind of gravitational pull, sucking us poor online plebs into its orbit. And because Twitter is the id unvarnished, the kerfuffle in question is usually nasty, brutish, and unedifying. Worst of all, this tiny little momentary conflict warps one's mind, as if anyone cares except the smallest of online sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-"communities." For writers, journalists and academics above all, these Twitter battles start to take up residence in the skull, as if they were not only real but vital and important. Articles and essays are written about them; sometimes they are deployed (with earnest soberness) as a synecdoche for cultural skirmishes to which they bear only the most tangential, and certainly no causal, relationship.
As it turns out, when you are ignorant of such things, they cease in any way to weigh down one's mind, because they might as well not have happened. (If a tweet is dunked on but no one sees it, did the dunking really occur?) And this is all to the good, because 99.9% of the time, what happens on Twitter (a) stays on Twitter and (b) has no consequences—at least for us ordinary folks—in the real world. Naturally, I'm excluding e.g. tweets by the President or e.g. tweets that will get one fired. (Though those examples are just more reasons not to be on Twitter: I suppose if all such reasons were written down even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.) What I mean is: The kind of seemingly intellectually interesting tweet-threads and Twitter-arguments are almost never (possibly never-never) worth attending to in the moment.
Why? First, because they're usually stillborn: best not to have read them in the first place; there is always a better use of one's time. Second, because, although they feel like they are setting the terms of this or that debate, they are typically divorced from said debate, or merely symptoms of it, or just reflections of it: but in most cases, not where the real action is happening. Third, because if they're interesting enough—possibly even debate-setting enough—their author will publish them in an article or suchlike that will render redundant the original source of the haphazard thoughts that are now well organized and digestible in an orderly sequence of thought. Fourth and finally, because if a tweet or thread is significant enough (this is the .01% leftover from above), someone will publish about it and make known to the rest of us why it is (or, as the case may be, is actually not) important. In this last case, there is a minor justification for journalists not to delete their Twitter accounts; though the reasons for deletion are still strong, they can justify their use of the evil website (or at least spending time on it: one can read tweets without an account). For the rest of us, we can find out what happened on the hellscape that is Twitter in the same way we get the rest of our news: from reputable, established outlets. And not by what's trending at any one moment.
For writers and academics, the resulting rewards are incomparable. The time-honored and irrefutable wisdom not to read one's mentions—corrupting the mind, as it does, and sabotaging good writing—turns out to have broader application. Don't just avoid reading your mentions. Don't have mentions to read in the first place.
