Flex wrote:I think probably it trends towards tribalism (is there a form of social communication that doesn't?)
Very true, of course, tho I'm thinking more about the whole nature of choosing to follow/accept a follower/unfollow/ban versus, I dunno, co-existing in an office environment, where the odds are that there's likely going to be greater diversity.
but for myself I follow a pretty wide swath of folks who I agree and disagree with to varying amounts. I actually think the medium can allow for a really nice, refined media stream that is more diverse than a lot of places. I pick lots of folks to follow that I disagree with, but the micro nature of Twitter means I can really pick and choose at a granular level who I like. So I don't just have to slog through everyone at, say, The American Conservative or Vox or whatever, but I can pick which commentators seem to be the most engaging to me and just follow them. I've had some good engagements with folks like Brendan Michael Dougherty, Adam Serwer, etc. over points of disagreement that I thought were interesting and productive.
So your experience is that disagreement isn't impaired? Okay, that's the main thing I was curious about. Would you lean towards the snits and spats with celebrities being about ego, then, rather than the nature of the environment?
I don't think Twitter is a great place for lengthy, nuanced discussion regardless of context (which isn't the same thing as saying it can't be a good place for smart discussion, it just necessarily takes a different form). That can be part of the problem when dealing with contentious issues between people with very different worldviews.
Yeah, that's the other thing that's obvious—the real estate limitation means that communication is sound bite-ish. There's value in concision, but the restrictions seem like a massive straightjacket to anything more in-depth.
"I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back in Whittier, they're not much bigger than two meters.'" - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft