We are into an attention economy, the attention economy needs emotion to drive it, the social media algorithms manipulate us all into feeding it, and those in charge of social media platforms wield enormous power.

It forces everyone to react, react immediately and in a tribal manner, it forces emotional responses and pushes out any rational look at issues. And so the need to feed it becomes self reinforcing

Clout on social media is the new currency, remember folks, Twitter and Facebook are free, you are the product

I am going to tread very carefully here, but we are incentivising and giving currency to things in a way that creates perverse incentives

So 'owning' someone on Twitter is now part of mainstream politics. It needs to stop, we need to get back to being serious about issues. Anyway, just a few thoughts on a wet Thursday night. Back to tomfoolery soon!