The Twitter Hate Machine | Hacker News Reader

The Twitter Hate Machine

daringfireball.net

38 pointsdijit13 comments

If Twitter shut down tomorrow, the world would be a better place, and nothing of great value would be lost. I'm not sure if I can be convinced otherwise.

I mainly use twitter to talk/catch up with a few friends, and follow a few things I care about. I honestly don't know how many people use twitter this way but for me it's really enjoyable, especially since the "desactivate retweets" feature for this friend that can't stop retweeting shitstorms. It's not perfect, and sometimes outside events that I don't want to hear about leak into my timeline, but it's a bit like small talk, sometimes people will talk about things that you don't care about. I wouldn't call this "great value" but I've never used facebook or others social networks so it's nice to see how some friends are doing.

I encourage everyone to be very aggressive with muting/desactivating retweets/having a private account/not quote-retweeting/not react to everything that happens in the world in general, this way it's possible to not expose yourself too much hate.

You're following the wrong people my friend.

Even if I stay clear of it (and I do), the daily episodes of frothing seep into our culture and cause problems.

I wish there were a way to measure the net result of Jack and friends on our culture and world. A deep inclination ( just anecdotal ) leads me to believe it would be a far negative balance.

The human, cultural and monetary cost of polarizing national and world events which find their origins, planning, fomenting on twitter have to be staggering.

And yet people, especially in tech, still play their stupid games.

Isn't there some famous quip about insanity and repeating dumb behaviors?

My grandfather would say, "if you step into a cesspool, don't be surprised if you come out stinking."

It sounds like the plot of a 1973 dystopian scifi movie. We have work to do to be better than our own worst imaginings.

Today it appears to be @dhh's turn.

The responses to his post run the gamut but seem to be mostly a dog pile of ridiculousness - including Godwin's law.

https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1387343362013995009

> "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play"

There isn't a good way to not play though. Even if you don't have a Twitter account, something you do can still be posted on Twitter and then the outrage machine can latch onto it.

Right, but seeing as how I lack a Twitter account, chances are I won't know about that outrage machine, and therefore probably won't care, unless (and only unless) I'm made aware of it through some other channel (like HN, or reddit, or someone texting me about it, or what have you).

Sometimes just shutting up and let the other side beat itself out is the smart play - they'll move onto something else in short order.

There is a reason that a lot of PR is saying literally nothing in the blandest ways possible.

Half of the journalism that is still out and about will know and will shove it in your face. Even the local TV news talks about twitter and shows tweets during the broadcasts. Even if you avoided the internet entirely...if there is enough outrage...you will find out about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com