It's not that you can't do thoughtful, meaningful posts in short-form social media. You probably can. But it's not a conducive format. And the things it is conducive for, reactive, performative, are invariably toxic.
There was some local news I heard last week on the Friday week in review on the local public radio station WJCT, that a couple of Jacksonville City Council members got into a little back-and-forth on Twitter, er, X and it got vulgar.
And the former mayor of Jacksonville, Lenny Curry, one of the leading figures behind the attempted sale of JEA, evidently posted a maternal vulgarity in response to an interlocutor who may have asked a provocative question regarding the conviction of the former CEO of JEA, and friend of Lenny's, Aaron Zahn.
He deleted the tweet, but not before someone screen-capped it and turned it into a Mother's Day meme. (I haven't seen it, this was just mentioned on the show.)
I felt a brief twinge of regret that I wasn't still on Twitter, er, X, so I could have piled on, er, added to the conversation. But I got over it.
If you're kind of morally compromised, if you've wandered pretty far from the path of righteousness, I'm pretty sure you're not going to find your way back on Twitter.
X.
Whatever.
And if you are one of the "good guys," I think it's likely that you'll find your stores of virtue and righteousness will be diminished by participation there, if you're not very careful.
Wrestling with pigs and all that.
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:30 Sunday, 24 March 2024