Distancing myself from Twitter

This past week has been rough for me on Twitter, and it was even before the white supremacist terrorist attack on a mosque in new Zealand. The fact is that I can't prevent myself from interjecting myself in online arguments, and then I have to deal with more fruitless debate that I really need.

That's why I decided today to protect my account. I will still be able to follow people and interact with my current followers, but even if I happen to reply to Someone Who's Wrong on the Internet™ (see www.xkcd.com/386/), it won't be able to degenerate into a travesty of a discussion.

This decision stems from my recent interactions with people who treat debate as a sport or worse, entertainment, and seem to like nothing more than point out to people that they are wrong according to their standards. These accounts even mention "debate", "argument" or "logic" in their bio to further the point that they aren't on Twitter to exchange ideas, just to punch people down with words.

Yes, it is a retreat move letting bad faith people "win" in a way, but you have to pick your online battles, and Twitter's core business model based on post publicity heavily favors bad faith anyway, so it would be an uphill battle even if there was an even distribution of good faith/bad faith accounts.

Besides, Twitter isn't the the only social media platform I'm on. Heck, it isn't even the main one I'm using, so this retreat feels like the next logical step before I leave this wretched platform altogether.

#socialmedia #twitter #debate www.xkcd.com/386/