Uh. I. Uh. I just want to say. For the record. Fff. The reason I'm trying to stay off twitter is not because I want to stay out of squabbles, although with its unremoveable new "what's happening" sidebar the place is definitely pivoting towards the prana farm – You know. Prana. It's a Sláine reference: aliens are farming the world's bad vibes to feed a giant space maggot. Prana farm, yeah? – no, the reason I'm trying to stay off twitter is because it's too cold outside to walk off the helpless rage I feel every time any attempt to scrutinise the liquefying - with calls to violence if necessary - of democratic accountability in the US and UK is characterised as the work of "the left", or "tribal", or as something "polarising" and to be avoided, as if the problem is the noise and not the grinding of the gears. Hey, remember when a British MP was literally assassinated for defending the EU? Is it polarising to even just remind people that that happened? (Or this, a few months earlier...)
Will even mentioning Jo Cox become like mentioning Hitler, a thing that just isn't done in demure political debate because it's somehow cheating to remind people that fascists are real? I've wanted the blog this year to be haven from reactive angst, I know, but I don't think remembering Jo Cox is reactive. Oh, unless it's a reaction to this: this is the polite response that twitter's Ian Dunt received when trying to engage a Brexiter in civilized public debate, the success of which I guess would be measured, like the cocktail task in Taskmaster, in decibels:
See? So demure. I wonder if he just forgot.
Terry Pratchett had a thing about how when humans see Death, their construct of reality can't accommodate an ambulatory skeleton, so scrambles to project something they can handle or else not see him at all. I think that's exactly what's going on with Jo Cox: people can't imagine that Britain is the sort of place where an MP would get murdered, so in their minds it isn't – or because it was done by a 'crazy', it doesn't count. And the thread of causality stops there.
ReplyDeleteI am still on Twitter way more than I ought or want to be – it's the best/only way to keep in touch with some valued friends, but it's a colossal time sink that I can't afford. However my time there has been improved dramatically by being merciless in pruning my feed. Anyone who sounds like my dad's right-wing talk radio, regardless of their political opinion, is not allowed the privilege of making me angry. It's been a positive policy, I have to say. Absorbing the anger of the internet isn't going to do anyone any good.
Would twitter be iproved if you couldn't reply to tweets I wonder. A lot of the highlights have been exchanges, but engaging can be a lazier act than disengaging. I'm trying to get back into Pratchett. He's not necessarily good at writing characters but he's GREAT at writing people.
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