by David Comfort
In 2006, Jack Dorsey, a 29-year-old NYU drop-out and shoe salesman reject, invented a new kind of human communication. Describing it as “bird chirps” and “short bursts of inconsequential information,” he called it Twitter. By year’s end, a new world symphony was underway with 60,000 “tweets” per day. Now: 500 million.
When later asked, What has Twitter become? Dorsey – even before banking $13 Billion and sporting a Biblical beard — said: “We don’t have an answer, and that’s OK.”
Is it any wonder that the weaponized word, delivered as a digital chirp, marrying the 1st and 2nd Amendments, has become a freedom Big Bang? It offers the once voiceless but concerned citizen a worldwide bully pulpit for or his or her 2¢ on any subject under the sun, without the inconvenience of leaving the house or getting arrested.
Tweeting pros and cons are many but boil down to two:
PRO: You’ll deepen your connection to and love of people.
CON: Your opinion of humanity can’t get any lower, but you don’t want to chance it.
PRO: Life is meaningless and futile, so why not Tweet?
CON: Since life is meaningless and futile, why double down on it?
The Pros ultimately prevail in this the “Age of Anger” because, according to psychologists, getting shit off your chest prevents nonCovid COPD. And today, chest elephants are many: pandemics, global warming, gun control, gay rights, sexism, immigration, whose life matters, life vs. choice, the molestation and cannibalization of children in pizza shops by the progressive satanic elite, etc.
Due to these countless bones of contention, Twitter has become a Happy Hour biker bar with billions of brawls breaking out. Dorsey & Co. try to cut down on Fight Club activity by seating excitable people at different feed tables, but Trolls crash the party anyway. Even a pacifist, on crystal blue or not, can break bad after only days on the platform.
There are many reasons for radicalization. Instead of getting RTs and Hearts, you’re the victim of unprovoked drive-bys and clusterfucks, mad as hell & not gonna take it anymore. Or: Your better half just left, you got fired, your house burnt down, your ball club lost the playoffs, your cable is out, or a psychotic has just become leader of the free world on the merits of his own dog whistles. Or, for no particular reason, your piss & vinegar tank is overflowing, you’ve dropped out of anger management and joined the Primal Scream scrum.
The fact is, nobody has ever changed anybody’s opinion on Twitter. But the simple pleasure of setting off a wingnut or fucktard, undermining his entire belief system and sanity, or just dragging him behind your chariot for an attitude adjustment – if only for a second — cannot be overestimated.
Political pugilists who thrive on the platform are the Twitter Taekwando Trolls. T3’s come in two varieties: Liberal and Conservative.
The Liberal is usually a Float-like-a-Butterfly, Sting-like-a-Bee specialist — bobbing, weaving, DoubleClutch Shuffling, and Rope-a-doping. Instead of monster hooks and upper cuts, the lib throws lightning-fast jabs at a Deplorable’s spelling, grammar, and/or IQ, while trash-talking him with names like Buttercup, Dipstick, Asshat, or Numbnuts.
The Conservative is usually a Raging Bull or Iron Mike who throws dizzying headshots, F-bombs and FOADs that often result in a 1st Round KO, if not a Mute or a Block. But if the Snowflake is ready to go the distance, the Bull softens her belly with altFacts, straw man arguments, and pretzel logic while cannibalizing her ear and threatening to eat her children.
Whether a pugilist or pacifist, many in the end cry, No Mos! The most compelling reasons to Qwitt and get an offline life are three:
You stay awake at night trying to think of virals and comebacks.
You tweet on the toilet.
Your family and friends have cut your wi-fi and are staging an intervention.
Philosophically and psychologically, the most compelling reason to go on the wagon is this: Millions of strangers worldwide are starting to piss you off worse than you’re pissing them off.
However, according to a 2012 University of Chicago study, Twitter can be harder to quit than alcohol or cigarettes. Twitterette Gum or The Patch are not yet available but will certainly earn a visionary manufacturer a fortune.
Today the easiest way to Qwitter is to get Twitter to quit you. Break its rules, especially those related to hate speech or fomenting an insurrection, you get suspended or banned unless you’re boosting its ad revenue or personal data collection.
How else can you get Dorsey’s monkey off your back?
The 4-step T-AA program. As with AA, the T-AA addict must concentrate on a step at a time, proceeding to the next only after s/he has mastered the one before.
1. Admit that you are powerless over Twitter—that your Social Media life has become unmanageable, if not a Black Hole.
2. Make a searching and fearless emotional and psychological inventory of your lonely, attention-craving self.
3. Compile a list of all the persons you have trolled, disappointed, embarrassed, annoyed or otherwise bummed out with your tweets, and make amends to all.
Finally, and most importantly:
4. Leave real networking to the Twitter Trinity: @God, @Pontifex, and @Katyperry.
Comfort is the author of three humor titles from Simon and Schuster, as well as historical nonfiction from Citadel/Kensington and Writer’s Digest Books. His satiric essays have appeared in Pleiades, Evergreen Review, The Montreal Review, Stanford Arts Review, 3AM magazine, Eclectica, and Dr. TJ Eckleburg.