(2022-04-27) Sacasas On Twitter Briefly

LM Sacasas: On Twitter, Briefly. (Musk Buys Twitter) Here you go, in no particular order, a few thoughts … some mine, some not.

Twitter is the only social media platform I use, and I’ve long characterized my use of it as a devil’s bargain

2. And yet, to return to the other side of the ledger, the human connections are real and meaningful

3. During the fidget spinner craze a few years back, a thought came to mind: “Social media are the fidget spinners of the soul.”...The self is in disarray, agitated, unsettled, directionless, and the best it can do is fidget with the platforms to keep the unease at bay

4. Obviously, Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter has been the impetus for the latest round of angst about Twitter, but Ivan Illich in Tools for Conviviality (1973) made some observations:... The issue at hand is not the juridical ownership of tools, but rather the discovery of the characteristic of some tools which make it impossible for anybody to “own” them. The concept of ownership cannot be applied to a tool that cannot be controlled.

The issue at hand, therefore, is what tools can be controlled in the public interest.

5. I’ve also found it difficult to resist characterizing Twitter as a tool akin to the Ring in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings... Donald Trump’s use of Twitter to master all other forms of media.... I can feel it working on me in much the same way that, in Tolkien’s world, the wearers of the Ring can feel it working on them. It leaves one feeling weary, thin, exposed, morally compromised, divided, etc., while deeply distorting one’s view of reality

6. But it is also true that my experience of Twitter is not the only possible experience of Twitter

7. From Ezra Klein: So what is Twitter built to do? It’s built to gamify conversation.

8. This one’s a bit speculative and maybe a deposit on a longer future post. I’ve been thinking lately about how the challenge Twitter presents to political culture might be framed as an unrelenting hostility to opinion. Perhaps I’ve lost you just now. Bear with me. I have in mind Hannah Arendt’s discussions of fact, opinion, and truth in relation to politics.... On Twitter, facts and truth collapse into one another and opinion gets squeezed.

9.: jack tweeted: I love Twitter. Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness.
He says this like its a good thing... it may be better to say that what we have is actually just plain old human consciousness pushed beyond its capacity by the scope, scale, and pace of the medium.

10. If you click through to read just one thing about Twitter, maybe make it Robin Sloan’s series of reflections. 2022-04-26-SloanTheLostThread

We do not enjoy a common world in which people matter, so we turn to online platforms to find what the common world cannot give us.