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The few times I venture into the realms of Twitter and Reddit, I just feel bad. It's not simply that the cancerous content there gets to me, it's that I should know better than to waste my time looking at anything on those places. The horrendous mix of stupid, ignorant people full of conviction and general intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
Even the general lack of reading comprehension on those places is disappointing. It's at the point where a lot of people there are on the platforms to shout past actual conversations. They'd rather dig their heels in with preconceived notions and pontificate to anyone in earshot.
I don't think this is anything new. It seems more a perfect example of the general idea that these people always existed, but we just didn't know about them. They were in their little offline circles, and relatively contained. Encounters with them would be stories we'd hear from friends about a worryingly ignorant individual they happened across. After listening to the tale, we'd all be like, "People like that exist?!?"
They do, though, and they're everywhere. Social media has made that quite apparent. Worse still, is that it's creating a feedback look that sucks more people in and infects them with the stupid. It really is disconcerting what has developed.
Mastodon doesn't appear to gone quite so far down this rabbit hole yet. They don't have the critical mass of users for that sort of thing to set in. This isn't to say that the place is somehow immune. I've come across the occassional bits of utter nonsense there as well, it's just nowhere near as widespread.
Some people may be inclined to argue that there's a place for social media pointing to things like the Arab Spring or other social movements. Yes, tools like Twitter were hugely helpful in those situations. Unfortunately, now those governments know those places exist and have long since clamped down. Nowadays, Twitter and Reddit are largely massive, open sewers spewing filth everywhere. There may be some nice art hiding in the corners, but so much of it is people shouting at each other or trying to put anyone they have a grudge with out of a job.
It's just one more reason to get off the Web and enjoy places like Gemini, which is still a domain of sensible people with something halfway intelligent to say.
Pennywhether
pennywhether@posteo.net
August 22, 2021