Deep Thoughts, by Lin-Manuel Miranda
Twitter is bad. This is both a truth and a truism, a fact so well-established that it has become trite—the kind of banality that gets spat out thousands of times an hour on Twitter.com. Don’t take my word for it. Tap a couple of key words into a Twitter search field and watch the results fill the screen: a scrolling catalogue of anti-Twitter invective, tweet after tweet proclaiming the platform a cesspool, a garbage fire, a “hellsite.” Twitter, it’s said, is corroding public discourse, spreading lies and hate, hastening our descent into illiberalism. The place is infested by bots, trolls, and other 21st-century golems, including, of course, the shambling ogre named Donald Trump. Sure, Twitter has merits: It is a useful internet aggregator, it’s a tickertape for breaking news and information, it’s a publishing platform for individuals and communities marginalized by gatekeepers, it’s a place for people to hang out and joke around and, who knows, maybe make a couple of IRL friends. But these virtues cannot compensate for the pollution Twitter has unleashed on lives, minds, and the body politic.
That’s one theory of the case, at least. There is another. The argument is not exactly that Twitter is good. It’s that Twitter is a place for goodhearted people to disseminate goodness: good tidings, good cheer, good advice, good vibes, good will.
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