The secret of Twitter: Tolerance is fatal

[shanen]

Twitter is not merely anti-democratic, but it actively fosters ignorance and stupidity. It sure would be nice if someone could convince me I'm wrong, but here is my theory of how Twitter actually works:

(1) Person A, an ignorant and intolerant person, tweets a lie.

(2) Person B tweets the truth as a reply to the lie.

(3) Person A and all of his Followers intolerantly Block Person B, whose account is therefore suspended.

(4) Person B and his Followers happily retweet the lie.

(5) Crickets.

The least tolerant opinion wins out. It actually doesn't have to be a lie, but I think that intolerance is most often linked to ignorant people. Still, the bottom line is that the least tolerant opinions will tend to prevail and they tend to be stupid and narrowminded opinions.

I'm not sure how to prove it, but I am convinced. If anyone is interested I can present several kinds of evidence, but I'm mostly interested in being convinced that I'm wrong. Insofar as Twitter has become am extremely large megaphone, the spewing of lies and blather that drowns out rational political discourse... Well, it kind of bothers me. A lot.

[Hey Jude]

1. Do you mean Twitter?

Twitter?

Where the number 3 trending topic in the US right now is #HoesTwerkingFor?

That Twitter?

Relax, it ain't that important.

[shanen]

2. Loud megaphone of stupidity

Au contraire, it is an extremely loud megaphone turned to the stupid channel.

There is some substantial confusion about freedom of speech. Everyone should have an equal right to express their opinions in public. That is not to say that anyone has a right to force other people to listen to their opinions.

However, what we may have in the case of Twitter is that stupid and intolerant opinions can force ALL other opinions to shut up. Just by the power of ignorant stupidity and the rules of the game.

[Lex]

3. Just because you get blocked by someone doesn't mean Twitter suspends your account.

Did I miss something there?

[davidpdx]

4. I would think the first reply would have to be extraordinarily nasty

for the person's account to be suspended. They would have had to do something that violates the TOS for Twitter like make a threat of some kind like that one stupid teenager who threatened Obama.

[shanen]

5. Rules of the Twitter game?

Well, what I can say is that I cannot say. An actual human from Twitter apologized for the TwitterBot, but I never found out the real reason.

My theory is that it wasn't a single block, but a contagious block, possibly triggered by a retweet from the Romney supporter to his intolerant gang of Romneynauts. If many of them issue blocks against the original target (my RomneyBot_says or my second anti-Romney account RomBot9000), then that might qualify under one of the nuke conditions.

Anyway, I'm still fighting on, and there has been another anti-Romney Twitterstorm since the video came out. Here are some of my favorites tweets:

RomneyBot_says: I’m sorry Dave, but I cannot let you vote for President Obama.

RomneyBot_says: I am entitled to be president. Why do you think you are entitled to health care, to food, to housing?

RomneyBot_says: It does not compute. Sometimes I did not pay income taxes, therefore I will never vote against President Obama. #noTaxReturns4U

RomneyBot_says: Vote for me so that government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% of American robots, shall rule the earth.

However, I've seen quite a number of witty and biting tweets during my little sojourn. I still think it's an asymmetrical situation in the neo-GOP favor...

[davidpdx]

6. I'm not really familiar with Twitter as I only use it ocassionally

It never really caught on for me like it has others. I'm more into Facebook.

On the rare occasion I post something is if I see a tweet that is reported here or on the news that I want to respond to.