Don’t Quit Twitter Just Yet
Don’t quit Twitter in a snit.
I know this is pretty rich coming from the man who loves to talk about how destructive social media is to our culture, but hear me out. If you’re quitting a social media platform because you recognize the harm it’s doing to your psyche, your productivity, and your relationships, you’ll find no greater cheerleader than me. You’re doing the right thing for yourself. It’s like quitting smoking, but for your very soul. So good on you for making yourself healthier. The rest of this piece isn’t for you.
If you’re quitting Twitter for political reasons, read on.
Everybody on conservative Twitter is upset about Twitter banning radio talk show host, online raconteur, and combat veteran Jesse Kelly for no explainable reason. And then they un-banned him. Go figure. In the surprise, dismay, and anger over his ouster, what hasn’t been said enough is this:
If you’re not a progressive, Twitter hates you. It wishes you would die. Failing that, it wants you to go away and never come back.
So Twitter is enemy territory. Like every other big tech company. You know this. But you should internalize it. Civil War 2.0 is happening right now.
Say I’m wrong about Twitter hating you. Maybe it really is a neutral platform devoted to the principles of free speech, despite all evidence to the contrary. If you’re not a progressive, Twitter is still enemy territory, because if you express the wrong thought to the wrong person, an angry progressive will report you. And he’ll encourage all his progressive buddies to report you. With enough complaints, you’ll be kicked out. Do you know how many tweets get reported in a single day? You’ll be kicked out on volume alone. The banners behind the scenes all think Orange Man Bad, and it’s easier to just flip the ban switch on you, you reprobate. Quantity, not quality. You see, you’re a normal person: you have a job. A calling. You log on to Twitter to talk to online buddies, share memes, mess with easily-upset people (progressives), perhaps make professional relationships, maybe sell something. You have a life outside of political Twitter.
Progressives don’t. So while you’re trying to have a good time on Twitter, there are literally thousands of angry progressives who have made it their life’s work to get rid of you. You can’t compete with that. Reporting people, banning people, eliminating ideas that upset them: it’s what they do. You bake bread for a living. They sit on Twitter and report people all day long. There’s no possible way to compete with that.
But it doesn’t mean you should quit. There are at least three good reasons to stay.
Every time you Tweet, you’re bothering the Twitter higher-ups. They’ve crafted contradictory, arbitrary, and unbelievably stupid Terms of Use, and they feel they have to put up the typical progressive facade of playing by these dumb rules, because if they tell you what they really think and feel, there’s no way anyone would ever do business with them. So they haven’t kicked you off yet, and it bugs them that you’re still there. Twitter is the enemy, and it’s always a good thing to upset the enemy. Stay on for that.
You’re not alone. Every other normal person feels the same way as you do RE: Twitter’s horrible management. It’s one of the things that makes you a normal person. Post links, laugh at Alexandria Occasional-Cortex’s latest gaffe, watch another clip of “Dear Diary” Jim Acosta getting spanked at a press conference, etc. Fill up the space with what you want, and take in what you like. One of the greatest things Rush Limbaugh ever did for conservatism was getting so popular. He showed us that we weren’t alone, that there were far, far more of us than we’d hoped. With Twitter being enemy territory, your fellow soldiers need battle buddies. Don’t quit because Twitter kicked someone off that you like.
Every normal person Twitter bans further exposes Twitter as a hostile place fit only for SJW-approved speech. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, is currently under scrutiny for lying to Congress. That’s not a tiny thing. By staying on, you’re forcing Twitter to both enforce its own capricious free-speech rules to maintain its facade, and daring them to ban you (which it will eventually), which is an untenable situation for any company. They can’t claim to be a neutral space for free speech and satisfy the Twitter progressives’ endless hunger for normal peoples’ scalps. You can mouth conservative bromides about #MuhFreeMarkets all you like, but social media companies do have to follow certain laws. If you have to bake the cake, they have to publish your tweets. Until they don’t. Then you get to call them hypocrites. Which doesn’t stick because a hypocrite has ethics, and Twitter progressives don’t. But it’s fun to point it out.
We’ve already ceded Hollywood, the news media, and the education system to the progressives. Are you going to void the social media field, too?
