The Importance of Being Twitter

The Importance of Being Twitter

The Atlantic and the Washington Post both published pieces this week declaring that Twitter is a far-right social network.

A staff writer penned the Atlantic's version. His opening paragraph is clearly not true, but like ChatGPT, he says it with authority:

"Twitter has long been described, even by its most ardent users, as a hellsite. But under Elon Musk, Twitter has evolved into a platform that is indistinguishable from the wastelands of alternative social-media sites such as Truth Social and Parler. It is now a right-wing social network."

National columnist Phillip Bump wrote the Post's piece.

He boldly claims that:

"By now it seems safe to conclude that Musk's intent in buying Twitter was not only to dismantle an institution that he perceived as a tool that empowered the media but to transform the social media platform into a heavyweight in the right-wing ecosystem. If that's the case, he has recently cemented two victories that bring that goal closer to reality."

By guest hosting Ron DeSantis on Wednesday, a spectacular technical failure, the meme that Musk and Twitter are "right-wing" has deepened.

So what can we make of boldy-asserted mistruths written by journalists, not opinion pieces, in respected publications like The Atlantic and the Post?

My belief is that both are symbolic of society's descent into anti-intellectual tribalism. Life has become a game of picking sides and caricaturing what one disagrees with, with the goal of marginalizing it to the point where its very existence is an affront to what is right. Where to say Twitter is to say "right-wing" and therefore beyond the pale. It is demonization.

Twitter is not a right-wing social network. Heck, Bernie Sanders is on it. And a zillion others. It is not a right-wing media venture. It is a perfectly fine place to publish and subscribe to various people, organizations, or persuasions. It really is a town square.

The critics are unhappy that actual right-wingers are allowed to be on the platform and, indeed, be high profile on it. It seems Twitter would only pass muster with them if such people were removed or constrained. Being present and challenged by others seems not enough to satisfy them.

And worse, they are leveraging publications like the Atlantic and the Post to proselytize their views. This seems like a "capture" to me in a tribal attempt to render the other tribe null and void.

This tribalism is not left-wing or right-wing. It is both. And it is shameful.

Another example of tribal thinking is the characterization of San Francisco as a nightmare city, pulled down by a left government intent on enabling criminals and the homeless to act beyond the law.

This week Martin Varsavsky, a very good entrepreneur of Argentinian descent, tweeted that his visit to San Francisco revealed it to not be in a zombie apocalypse. He revealed that this point of view was met with many replies calling him left-wing, just as Musk is being called right-wing. His tweet is this week's tweet of the week.

What Musk and Varsavsky have in common is common sense and preparedness to question orthodox narratives with facts and opinions. Both are critical thinkers who experience repetitive name-calling as what it is, a shallow attempt to shut up anybody with whom one disagrees.

I was at my son's Syracuse graduation last week and listened to former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala (a Lebanese American), talk about the need for critical thinking and questioning everything.

This is the opposite of the demand for repetitive orthodoxy called for by the Post and Atlantic. Twitter is a platform for everybody. That, it seems, is its crime. And that is why it is important for us to use it, be part of it, and embrace it. Leaving Twitter would be a victory for tribalism, which is not critical thinking. That is the importance of being Twitter.

To help remove the noise, I am publishing an hour-long interview Musk did yesterday with the Wall Street Journal. It is clear from the interview that any narrow political labeling of Misk is far from accurate and is itself open to being challenged as political. Andrew is still traveling, but normal videos will return next week.

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