33 Comments
Dec 15, 2022Liked by Gurwinder

Excellent article, the advice on managing your feed is also excellent and can be applied to other social media and news sources as well.

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On my entire time on Twitter I've blocked precisely zero people. There's only been one instance of some creepy little stalker where I considered it. I think it's a waste of time even to bother blocking people. If you add up the amount of time you spend blocking people I'm not sure what it would come to, but whatever it is it's probably not even worth giving to these people even to block them. The best way to curate a feed is to forget the main feed and just build lists of accounts who you want to hear from on various topics. I have about 20 of these lists. You can also now have 5 of them on the dashboard at the top, and flick between the best ones. I've barely posted on Twitter recently for some of the reasons you cite, but I check the lists everyday, and everyday there's some interesting info or a book recommendation or a thread or something to weave into a song or piece of writing or something to research in future. Hence me being here writing this now. If I click onto the main feed I see something that pisses me off within a few mins, because it's as you say, geared for drama and wired to induce aggravation – and I am not innocent here! Anyway, I meant to say this was a good piece so well done.

Ironically, Foucault had an interesting perspective on 'civil war'. A bit like Hobbes, he suggested that it is the natural condition of society. It's strange that we call the American or Spanish or English civil wars 'civil' – they were anything but! Foucault's conception of civil war was closer to the concept of 'culture war': typically regarded as inconsequential nonsense but in fact the lifeblood of any society. A constant, ever-raging war of ideologies – it remains 'civil' on the surface, that is to say non-violent. But deeply tied to society's conception of punishment, whatever it may be at any one time, whatever it believes needs to be punished. This stuff is in his lecture book 'The Punitive Society', quite a strong analysis of this concept in there, and despite the woke being his spiritual 'successors', most of his statements are applicable to them. Twitter is sort of a digital punishment machine where everyone gets to inflict blows on their enemy.

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Dec 15, 2022Liked by Gurwinder

You’re really the best person on twitter ! You are so right and you explain so clearly

Thank you to give us other wise persons like you to follow. I need it!

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Dec 15, 2022Liked by Gurwinder

Nicely argued - thanks

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Stopping the “non-electoral politics of institutional capture” in Wesley Yang’s words isn’t the only thing that matters. But it does, indeed, matter. For an example of why, see:

https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/policing-outside-their-jurisdiction

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Dec 18, 2022·edited Dec 18, 2022Liked by Gurwinder

A huge part of this tendency to seek validation online comes from a miniscule yet growing number of zoomer men in their early 20s who lack companionships and relationships in real life. They're very important things even to the introverted, but for a number of reasons like social anxiety and so on, they don't make any and are convinced that they never will/are too tired to keep trying. So they seek solitude online, where their insecurities are stymied by anonymity and they receive the validation that they seek. And of course, their behaviour online is less than cordial, to say the least. These guys, many of whom I do know personally, are polite to a fault and super defensive in real life social situations. That's a different issue which we do need to actively address IMO.

As I'd said earlier in another one of your pieces, once internet dialogue and online, multimedia activity will soon enter real historical territory, it'll be very interesting to witness. Like if a bunch of guys were sitting around an office break room talking about Nixon in the waning of his Presidency of the US, that conversation is lost to the ether. But these kinds of conversations today tend to happen in text, whether on Twitter, Reddit, a YouTube thread, a blog comment thread, or text messaging, making their retrieval at least technically feasible, if not downright easy.

So looking back on people's thoughts on, say, Donald Trump in 2020, will be possible in 2070, fifty years later, in a way entirely different from trying to look back in 2020 to something from about fifty years earlier (c. 1970).

That will be really odd to experience, IMO, unless God Emperor Elon for whatever reason decides to nuke the whole platform and take everything down into the annals of history.

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Thank you for this article.

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Good ideas, good writing. I’m glad I ran across you in my feed-- looking forward to more of your writing.

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I really enjoyed the piece.

Just wanted to let you know that I linked it in the intro of this today:

https://www.libertyrpf.com/p/369-amazon-ads-vs-facebook-ev-batteries

Cheers, and happy new year (soon), Bhogal 💚 🥃

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Dec 20, 2022Liked by Gurwinder

Twitter is a drug and uncontrolled quality will cause harm. So treat accordingly...

If you assume most of the information on the web is just a clickbait (with minimal exceptions), your life become easier.

Also ask yourself whether someone's opinion is productive and destructive and learn to form your own.

Stress level goes way down.

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Dec 18, 2022Liked by Gurwinder

“None of this would be problem if it were inconsequential, but the consequence of believing that people are extremer than they are is that it makes you extreme.” THIS. The perception that we’re heading toward civil war (and that everyone else thinks so) seems like the thing most likely to result in that outcome.

Also, I’ve come to largely the same conclusions as you re. Twitter. When it’s well-curated, it can be a great source of info and knowledge. When (God forbid) I click on the trending topics, I’m bombarded with a barrage of shit that makes me feel angry/upset/disillusioned with humanity. I now try to actively avoid the trending topics and stick the the feed of accounts I intentionally follow, but occasionally I dip a toe in — and instantly regret it.

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Excellent article. Thanks for writing it. I may have caught a typo. In the 4th paragraph, you wrote, “Despite not even being American, it became impossible for me not to avoid the verbal crossfire between #MAGA advocates and #TheResistance.” In my reading, the second “not” in the sentence should be removed. It should read, “... it became impossible for me to avoid the verbal crossfire...”. If I’m wrong about this, feel free to delete this comment.

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Cracking read and I’ve been meaning to curate my twitter feed for a while. Thanks for the nudge.

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Dec 16, 2022Liked by Gurwinder

i love reading this. it did not only shows the virtual noises but it gives tips on muting the noises.

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You explained so much and restored some degree of faith in humanity for me. Thnx

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Dec 15, 2022Liked by Gurwinder

Wonderfully written article that really gets at the heart of social media's role in escalating culture war nonsense, and yet still managed to leave me feeling hopeful. Also, the small trove of recommended Twitter follows in the last few paragraphs was a nice little parting gift. Thanks.

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