To: social media users

re: "you're getting bitter and overreacting and you're the problem"

Unless you have had a social media account that gets high engagement (maybe you post about controversial topics), you don't understand what a place like Twitter can do to you.

You really don't.

Yes. Twitter makes a person bitter and angry. Yes, I am included in that. Yes, it's a poison place.

But also, no.

There is a difference between being a cussed son of a bitch for the sake of it, and being a loudmouth who is genuinely trying to push back against actual destructive cultural forces.

Yes, I think of myself as one of those people pushing back. But I'm small potatoes with only a taste of what it must be like for actually prominent people.

That doesn't mean that, just because one is doing it for "the right reasons", that one is entitled to behave as badly as possible.

But there is a difference between the kind of anger and pushback that being targeted by narcissistic liars evokes, and the actions of those narcissistic liars.

It's not a symmetrical "both sides."

In any event, I think platforms like Twitter are probably inherently, fundamentally toxic to human communication. I suspect that they can't be "reformed", because their success depends on their ability to generate toxic behavior. If they were reformed, they would be a totally different kind of communications platform.

People of good will, including actual real life friends, have told me that Twitter made me mean, caustic, and unreasonable. Fair. That did happen. I'm not proud of my Twitter self (most of it, anyway). It is a net positive that I'm not on the platform anymore.

But that's the end of my apologia. I will only go so far in being willing to hear that criticism without reciprocation from critics.

1. If you've never had a high-engagement account, you literally don't understand the experience.

2. What seems "bizarre" to you in someone's behavior there is perfectly explicable if you've been on the inside of that dynamic. Note--I said "explicable," not "blanket moral excuse for any behavior."

3. No matter how many times someone says this, "The real world isn't like Twitter, and you only think it is because you're immersed in Twitter," that isn't going to make it true.

It's not true that transing children is "mostly Twitter." It's going on in every state in the nation, and in most public schools.

It's not true that "you only think people are doing as bad as they are because your cortisol is stoked." People are, in actual fact, doing as bad as they appear to be doing. In real life. Outside Twitter.

It's not true that "well the right is just as bad." Not today. Not in 2022. That doesn't mean the right hasn't been bad (it has), it doesn't mean that it has no bad actors today (it does), and it doesn't mean that the right might not become the more oppressive force again (it might).

For someone as emotional and passionate as I am, I have to try hard to listen to people who think I'm too reactive. They have a point, and they're right to a degree.

But at the same time, I will only concede so much.

I have been correct about a good number of cultural trends and have correctly predicted how they would grow, and what damage they would do.

Many of the things that critics (and also genuine friends) have said were "overreactions" on my part were not overreactions. They were correct predictions.

Sometimes things are as bad as us "cynics" and "pessimists" say they are.

I'm trying to fairly accept my own failings and concede the correct points made by critics (and friends). But there is an asymmetry, and that asymmetry is what makes me draw the line about how much I'll concede.

Very rarely does any critic come back and acknowledge that their criticism of my view, or my approach, was wrong. That I was right to say what I did, that they didn't want to believe me and that was on them, not on me.

If I got more of that reciprocity, I'd be willing to reciprocate more.

But I don't, so I'm not going to.