Anonymous User asked: The current state of Twitter feels like everything bad about Tumblr circa 2015-16 got added to everything that always bad about Twitter. Twitter's ability to take "every opinion you've ever had and Canonizie it so you will be remembered as the Guy Who Hates X" has collided with Tumblr's tendency to make "Insecure Teenager Opinions about Media, The Fandoms Surrounding It And Your Willingness to Attack Or Defend It" the most important thing that says a lot about you, as a person (see that one anon here who was freaking it about the notion of Signalis being anti communist,) creating the worst possible place.
Honestly, I'll admit I'm guilty as charged of this as well. You know how assholes who wrote for The Atlantic and the NYT treat what the "Intellectual Dark Web" grifters say as serious things that warrant public discourse? That's me with every take you, Spacetwinks, Dia, Yussef, Vectorpoem and your whole loose crew of "gamer leftist posters" say. I'm not particularly a leftist or a gamer but I want them to think I'm cool because 2016 Tumblr was my main formative experience with the left as a whole.
ah, one last online discourse for the road, cohost. you've earned it.
and yeah i agree it's a pressure cooker. you can't really exempt yourself from the social forces that are causing all the problems even while you are aware of them, and annoyed by them. we still want to be correct and thoughtful and have people like us, but twitter always has, and under musk has truly supercharged, preyed on those in extreme ways that make many of us miserable for no gain except Time On App Goes Up.
i think often about the people who hate me, or who i don't like for one reason or another, and how similar we probably are. maybe they thought i was being too aggro about a movie i didn't like, maybe they were sniping at someone else and the post irritated me, the circumstances don't really matter but the modern digital space is full of thses uneven, asymettrical relationships, usually negative but sometimes uncomfortably positive (it can flow either way), between people who had they just been in a similar friend group irl would probably just get on fine and have a beer lmao.
not to say these social pressures don't happen offline too, there's a reason people call twitter or tumblr just high school again, but i do often get wistful about how many friends i haven't made just because our first interactions happened to be pissing each other off online about final fantasy lmao. it is what it is.
though as you point out it is REALLY funny when it goes the other way, when it's rich, culturally successful and respected writers for established publications imploding their careers because they know they don't have the Poster's Respect lmao.