It amplifies (4 better & worse) our passions. It can't be blamed 4 the content we broadcast through it. If toxicity (degradation/humiliation/accusation) is our primary game, we're able to deliver it remotely & quicker, but we can bring thoughtfulness 2. No MAGA w/o Twitter. https://twitter.com/warrenlain/status/1009950277099810817

Thanks for the question. I thought of pseudo-intimacy too. This from Paul Virilio: "To empty the streets, it's enough to promise everyone the highway." The quick hit of remote passion (on our phones) can speed us away from lived life.

@U2 's "Elevation" has a weird line/prayer: "Explain all these controls." It comes to mind when I consider the fact that I can ask @drmoore & @albertmohler & @ericmetaxas to publicly rebuke @VP in the name of Jesus for the terrors his administration enacts in our name.

I don't have their "followings," but this technology affords people like us the ability put a little note/plea on the global bulletin board, just as it gave @realDonaldTrump the chance 2 run for President on the back of some1 else's white supremacist birther movement.

I don't know if, in the long run, Twitter will prove to have been a net gain for the cause of righteousness in the land of the living, but I know we're responsible for what we make of it. Out of the depths of the heart the social media feed speaks. Thanks again for the ?.

I think of Auden's adage: "Show an affirming flame." I'm personally drawn to the drama of who will/won't risk affirming particular content with RT/"like". Affirmation amplifies the fragile cause of righteousness. Risk aversion obscures it.

Tweet/"like"/RTing is, in 1 sense, the tiniest gesture, but I suspect our tiny little avoidances of conflict add up over time & eventually yield, with humiliating exactness, the world we're in. Same as it ever was.

Why boost some signals & ignore others? Do we front when it matters? Are we stingy w/ our associations? "There are so many silences 2 be broken," Audre Lorde observes. "Our ears, like it or not, take in so much in a day." saith Adrienne Rich. Amplify thoughtfulness always.

It takes a village to build a city on rock and roll.

Ain't No Future In Yo Frontin