Read on Twitter
My mate Liz, who is very politically active, has always refused to join Twitter. Her rationale is the ‘shitposting’ issue; any attempt at sensible debate will just get drowned out by garbage… (1/11)
It’s increasingly hard to disagree with her. But it’s hard to escape Twitter once you’re here, innit? (2/11)
That’s especially true if you work in the media, which has handed this platform a disproportionate level of importance over the past decade, giving it endless free advertising, subtly or unsubtly pressuring its employees to join… (3/11)
For instance, I’ve encountered two large sports organisations who have based their reporter recruitment strategy, at least in part, on size of Twitter following. (4/11)
And I once met a comedy producer who said that, when deciding which emerging writers and performers to work with, he based his judgement partly on how funny they were on Twitter. (5/11)
And yet, ultimately, what’s the benefit? I’ve seen people I like go slowly mad on here, sucked into an endless cycle of binary arguments and sub-tweeting. (6/11)
Look at what happened to Graham Linehan. The bloke who co-wrote Father Ted, and one of the most enthusiastic early exponents of this site, turned into an absolute… well, use your own language. (7/11)
‘Ah, but how could ever we have predicted our ideal of a high-speed democratic information exchange could degenerate so?’ you might ask. (8/11)
Well, in the mid-to-late 2000s, I used to moderate the forums on the Manchester Evening News website, which were essentially a competition to see who could say the most libellous thing about Cristiano Ronaldo without it being deleted. So I could have fucking told you then. (9/11)
I know that was a more innocent age. But did no one consider the possibility that the site might end up being used by a lunatic to try to start the apocalypse? (10/11)
Anyway, I hope this thread gets lots of likes and retweets, so that I can feel good about myself. (11/11)
