Friday, April 23, 2010

Twitter and Other Chat

I joined Twitter just about a month ago and i like it. It was easy learning how to navigate around in twitter space. Once you become familiar with hash tags, how to search out and follow people, you can have a bit of fun. I find myself following political figures, journalist, newspapers and other agencies that provide information. That is how I use Twitter not social networking though I do comment on the comments of others.
The content is the comment in 140 characters or less. There is enough room to express a feeling but seldom enough space to explain it. Users seem to divide among those that provide links to content like blogs, web sites or newspapers and the floaters that drift around inside social pools leaving thoughts in their wake.
A lot of the writings are banal, updates on where you are what you are feeling make up a large part of this sphere. Things get a bit more pointed when politics enter the fray. Popular pundits and political parties and figures are railed against, slurred or rallied for depending on your divide. Ignorant and uncivil behaviour was not invented with the chat room but it has found a fullness of expression here. In real life we are anonymous in public. We seldom know anything about the pepole we walk by or bump into on the subway in the malls. To make our way in this public world we are generaly civil. When we choose to associate with others for fun or profit we still try to be polite for the most part, pleae forgive these qualifiers, some small fringe have always been ignorant and abusive.
What I find disconcerting is the large number of people who choose to be ignorant and abusive in the "anonymous in public" framework of the chat space. If you frequent the opinion section of newspapers, blogs , Cable News sites or anything with a political flavour you find the descent into uncivil discourse is geatest.Now it is not that poeple haven't always argued politics, sports and religion, but in the past you did it in the same room with the other guy and this generally restrained both parties. Online comments sections or chat spaces require self restraint that many appear not to have.
What we end up having are partisan sites, where people of like mind congregate safe from opposing view points. Other people do show up and bait these groups with outrageous statements, these people commonly called "trolls", but these people are quickly ejected. The most important topics in our society can no longer be discussed in open and public forums without disruptions. People thanks to the internet can come from all over the world and seperate into groups along lines of belief and never have to hear an opposing thought which is kind of sad.

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