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Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast
A vast majority of tweets seem to fall into the "meaningless fluff" category; superficial, nonsensical and relevant to only a select few of the person's followers. Being that less than a quarter of Americans are reported to be active on this particular social media platform suggests that many conversations will end up being dominated by the more vocal and politically extreme on either end of the spectrum.
For those of us who prefer more in-depth, detailed information, Twitter seems to work best when a tweet redirects to a specific article that has the space to effectively articulate the author's point of view, and that bolsters their arguments with data from various sources.
Many do try and use Twitter to form a cogent argument or convincing narrative, but ultimately fail because a mere 140 - 280 characters is unfortunately a too limited amount of space in which to properly frame and elucidate ideas in their proper context.
So, what often ends up happening is that those on either side of a divisive issue engage in a series of pithy one-liners, appeals to emotion, short insults and back and forth name-calling, not dissimilar to a junior high school cafeteria food fight.
The main problem with this sort of conflict seems to be a lack of nuance and an incomplete understanding of complex issues from participants on both sides.
To take the most recent protests in Iran as an example...
Last week the hashtags #IranProtests and #FreeIran were both trending on Twitter during the height of the demonstrations, with people in both camps tweeting for or against their respective causes. Lost in this verbal melee was the subtle but complicated understanding that many different perspectives of the various players can be true simultaneously.
Comment: For an excellent analysis of the US-backed MEK terrorists, Niall Bradley's in-depth report is a must read!
MEK Terrorist Death Cult: Meet Washington's 'Iranian Opposition'