Has twitter helped or hurt our country?

[transplantbillsfan]

Created in 2006

 

Clearly took some number of years to explode.

 

Place where ANYONE has a voice.

 

Argument for it of course is that all voices are heard, not just the select few among the media who have historically progressed from pen to typewriter to computer to smartphone.

 

Argument against it is also that all voices are heard, not just the select few among the media who have historically progressed from pen to typewriter to computer to smartphone.

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, I fall in the latter group, but I'm curious the general sentiment. Twitter has more than tripled in active users since 2012, a Presidential election year.

 

I read tweets as I lurk on here. Most are opinions. Some are referred to as "source material" but often imply or mean something a shade or completely different than what the original poster believed it meant.

 

So... twitter...

 

Empowering?

 

Dividing?

 

Neither?

 

Both?

Edited September 28, 2019 by transplantbillsfan

[Buffalo_Gal]

Like so many inventions (car, phone, etc) it is both positive and negative. Positive in that it is the fastest way possible for news and event reports to get around the world. Negative in that the doxxing, harassment, arguing, etc isn't helpful to anyone.

 

I miss the early days of twitter before it came under mob and bot control. You could actually have interesting and informative conversations back then. 

 

 

[ExiledInIllinois]

Mobile platform & smartphones made it go wild.

 

Election of 2008... Smartphones were just coming on scene. 2012... Again, tech, speeds just not there to manipulate via mobile.  Tech was in place and numbers of people using smartphones by 2016 made it the right time to manipulate the people.

 

I don't even have a computer any more.  Desktop? LoL...  Like going on a decade without one. The only time I use a laptop computer is when I do taxes. And I borrow my wife's she uses for (very seldom) for work... And she's even not on that... She has a Surface at work. Only other time I am on a desktop is when I am at work.

 

I am 99.9999% mobile, everything I do.  Which has never been Twitter or Facebook, which is for the idiot masses.  I guess it's like radio was in the 1930s and TV 1950s, and now smartphones/handheld devices 20teens...

 

Think about it... We had FDR trying to calm a suffering populace with with a few orange glow fireside chats about a chicken in every pot... Now we have the Trumpster rile up a rosy azz populace giving lectures on spelling, properly placed apostrophes and how to choke a chicken under the glow of the blue mobile light.

 

You've (Tech) come along way baby!

 

[ExiledInIllinois]

25 minutes ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

Like so many inventions (car, phone, etc) it is both positive and negative. Positive in that it is the fastest way possible for news and event reports to get around the world. Negative in that the doxxing, harassment, arguing, etc isn't helpful to anyone.

 

I miss the early days of twitter before it came under mob and bot control. You could actually have interesting and informative conversations back then. 

 

 

Maybe it took a while for the Twitter platform to bust the bubble.  And when they did bust, people just retreated to another bubble.

 

You obviously never saw this board, PPP in 2002-2003.  Forums were around for a long time... I betcha they had interesting and informative discussions over the BBS's. LoL...

[Teddy KGB]

Twitter is way way way too far left.  

 

Uneven moderation, total clown show 

[Chef Jim]

3 hours ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

Like so many inventions (car, phone, etc) it is both positive and negative. Positive in that it is the fastest way possible for news and event reports to get around the world. Negative in that the doxxing, harassment, arguing, etc isn't helpful to anyone.

 

I miss the early days of twitter before it came under mob and bot control. You could actually have interesting and informative conversations back then. 

 

 

 

I don’t use it but I’m aware of what the positives and negatives are and I feel the negatives way outweigh the positives. 

 

Ive been saying for a few years now it, and social media in general, will help in the downfall of the Republic. 

[Foxx]

5 minutes ago, Chef Jim said:

 

I don’t use it but I’m aware of what the positives and negatives are and I feel the negatives way outweigh the positives. 

 

Ive been saying for a few years now it, and social media in general, will help in the downfall of the Republic. 

what is the alternative? returning to living under a mushroom and being fed bull####?  

[meazza]

13 minutes ago, Foxx said:

what is the alternative? returning to living under a mushroom and being fed bull####?  

Because that’s the only alternative.

 

[Foxx]

13 minutes ago, meazza said:

Because that’s the only alternative.

 

an alternative of the first amendment is the only alternative.

[4merper4mer]

I view Twitter as neither positive nor negative.  I view it as inevitable.  It's one of a long line of things that can have their positives and negatives argued:

 

guns, nuclear energy/weapons, genetic engineering, combustion engine, and thousands upon thousands more.

 

 

If something can be invented/marketed/used, it will be.  Whining about it does nothing to change it.  

 

The real issue I see wrt to Twitter specifically is the deception behind it as being some sort of open format.  It's not.  It's just a company doing predictable things to bolster its bottom line and market share.  It tries to keep competitors at bay.

 

It gets to do this in unusual ways compared to older companies.  The past two POTUS' have given them free advertising daily.  Imagine if JFK always had a can of Coke while speaking.  Would that hurt Pepsi or potential future Pepsis?   Beverages are one thing but centralized messaging carries a lot more leverage.

 

 

[3rdnlng]

3 minutes ago, 4merper4mer said:

I view Twitter as neither positive nor negative.  I view it as inevitable.  It's one of a long line of things that can have their positives and negatives argued:

 

guns, nuclear energy/weapons, genetic engineering, combustion engine, and thousands upon thousands more.

 

 

If something can be invented/marketed/used, it will be.  Whining about it does nothing to change it.  

 

The real issue I see wrt to Twitter specifically is the deception behind it as being some sort of open format.  It's not.  It's just a company doing predictable things to bolster its bottom line and market share.  It tries to keep competitors at bay.

 

It gets to do this in unusual ways compared to older companies.  The past two POTUS' have given them free advertising daily.  Imagine if JFK always had a can of Coke while speaking.  Would that hurt Pepsi or potential future Pepsis?   Beverages are one thing but centralized messaging carries a lot more leverage.

 

 

This stuff is not new. It started with the subliminal messages flashed across the movie theatre screen showing food, candy and drink to get you to buy it.

[4merper4mer]

3 minutes ago, 3rdnlng said:

This stuff is not new. It started with the subliminal messages flashed across the movie theatre screen showing food, candy and drink to get you to buy it.

It not new but it is more pervasive and efficient.

[3rdnlng]

14 minutes ago, 4merper4mer said:

It not new but it is more pervasive and efficient.

Somewhere I have a case of subliminal messages on cassettes designed for self improvement. The first one in the sequence had to do with stopping procrastination. They seem to be just the sound of waves washing in on shore, and you just leave them on all the time and with the auto reverse function on the cassette player you'd forget about them. After a few days my teenage daughter started cleaning her room everyday which floored me.

[Chef Jim]

2 hours ago, Foxx said:

what is the alternative? returning to living under a mushroom and being fed bull####?  

 

Debating face to face like real men instead of hiding behind a keyboard. Stop being #######s to each other and having civil discourse.  That’s the bullshiit. 

[Foxx]

7 minutes ago, Chef Jim said:

 

Debating face to face like real men instead of hiding behind a keyboard. Stop being #######s to each other and having civil discourse.  That’s the bullshiit. 

we evolved out of chaos. it will work itself out, 1984 be damned.

[/dev/null]

Neither

 

It only brought to the surface what had already been festering

[Warren Zevon]

 

Answer: Never before Twitter

[3rdnlng]

LBJ had a proclivity for calling Black and Brown people *iggars.

[snafu]

9 minutes ago, Gary Busey said:

 

Answer: Never before Twitter

 

Lame.

You think every President before Twitter was kind and obsequious when Congress wouldn’t go along with his policies?

You don’t think that language was saltier than “savages”?  

Oooohhhh “savages”, where are my pearls?!?!

 

 

 

[transplantbillsfan]

A lot of people enjoy the kind of trolling that illuminates the gullibility of the powerful and their willingness to respond. One of the best is Congressman Steve Smith, a Tea Party Republican representing Georgia’s 15th District, which doesn’t exist. For nearly three years Smith has spewed over-the-top conservative blather on Twitter, luring Senator Claire McCaskill, Christiane Amanpour and Rosie O’Donnell into arguments. Surprisingly, the guy behind the GOP-mocking prank, Jeffrey Marty, isn’t a liberal but a Donald Trump supporter angry at the Republican elite, furious at Hillary Clinton and unhappy with Black Lives Matter. A 40-year-old dad and lawyer who lives outside Tampa, he says he has become addicted to the attention. “I was totally ruined when I started this. My ex-wife and I had just separated. She decided to start a new, more exciting life without me,” he says. Then his best friend, who he used to do pranks with as a kid, killed himself. Now he’s got an illness that’s keeping him home.

 

Marty says his trolling has been empowering. “Let’s say I wrote a letter to the New York Times saying I didn’t like your article about Trump. They throw it in the shredder. On Twitter I communicate directly with the writers. It’s a breakdown of all the institutions,” he says. “I really do think this stuff matters in the election. I have 1.5 million views of my tweets every 28 days. It’s a much bigger audience than I would have gotten if I called people up and said, ‘Did you ever consider Trump for President?'”

 

...

 

“It’s not about the target. If they get blocked, they say, ‘That’s cool,’ and move on to the next person,” she says. Trolls don’t hate people as much as they love the game of hating people.

Edited September 28, 2019 by transplantbillsfan