I see Twitter as a sort of necessary evil: a mainstream communication channel that is universally accessible and therefore a generally positive concept on the micro level, that has been abused on the macro level to scary degrees. Ryan has a more, shall we say, negative outlook, but makes some increasingly valid points.
The only difference is that [Twitter's] hopelessly-addicted user base is made up of journalists, politicians, celebrities, and academics. So we’re forced, as a society, to take Twitter’s inane message board drama more seriously than we [normally] would.
But Twitter is a video game and [Bean Dad] became a boss battle for the day...
Community moderation [on Twitter] is so poor that users have resorted to waging daily tribal warfare with each other as a way to keep themselves safe and secure (and entertained).
Twitter’s public engagement metrics — follower counts, retweets, quote tweets, replies, and likes — have gamified on-site behavior to a degree where users can no longer be expected to authentically communicate with each other. Everything is perceived to be for clout, even if it’s not.
[The reality of Bean Dad for Twitter] means that context collapse has gotten so bad and the scale of your trending algorithms are so completely out of whack that a total moron tweeting about beans can create the same level of discussion within your community as the Trump Georgia call. It means that your users are so desperate for your made up internet points that they would consider turning an extremely mundane story about using a can opener into a TWENTY-THREE tweet thread and are also so vicious and insane and bored that they would turn that thread about beans into a national scandal.
