The Twitterization of the Modern Mind
Social media has changed the way we think, talk and debate.
Research Wrap-up
This week was a busy one… I’m still working on a beast of an article on linear regression in Python that should be going out next week, but I did manage to eek out an article on the meaning, benefits and downsides of being a full-stack developer. You can find that article here.
The Twitterization of the Modern Mind
I've noticed something recently in debates with friends, family and strangers: the longer or more complex my argument for or against something, the less likely it was to be accepted, understood or agreed with. My hotter takes that took less time to explain were most likely to be accepted, or at least understood.
The thing that gets me isn’t that people don’t agree with me. That part I’ve more or less gotten used to, being online for as long as I have and exposing myself to as many ideologies as I have. The thing that gets me is that there is a certain point where people tend to flip some switch and decide to stop listening. There’s a point where I describe a solution that is fairly complex, or a set of changes that are too ‘out there’ or ‘unrealistic’ and people just more or less stop listening or put up a wall.
Now, part of this is poor communication on my part. I need to better form and understand my own beliefs and debate structures in order to communicate with others, and that's something that actively debating helps a lot with. I also need to work on my brevity to a certain extent as well.
However, I think it's also indicative of a more dangerous condition that we have collectively entered into: the Twitterization of the mind and the discourse.
Now, this phenomena has less to do with Twitter and more to do with social media in general, but I think Twitter's 280 character limit (up from 140, remember?) is a solid example of the particular software decisions that helped contribute to this problem.
The problem, put most simply, is this: if it can't fit neatly in a Tweet, or at least a digestible Thread, our minds are more apt to reject it.
Take any given difficult discussion in politics and society right now and try to discuss it with a friend, family member or even stranger. What you'll note is that explanations of "well it's more complicated than that" are frequently met negatively, or at least with resistance, regardless of the actual philosophical belief system of the other half of the debate.
Take your position on gun violence. If you were to post something critical or in support of gun control legislation and my reply started with "well, it's complicated..." your immediate thought is likely to be "no it's not! I just wrapped it up in a tweet!" Mine is like that with many issues as well, I have to actively fight that urge to accept that all big problems are nuanced.
Look at our slogans. ACAB and MAGA are very frequently seen all over social media, and I don’t mean to equate the two but they are 4 letter summarizations of general ‘vibes’ that miss out on a lot of the nuance behind the foundational abolitionist and nationalist messaging behind the respective slogans. “Defund the police” is another great example: it describes the vibe in three words, but says nothing of the social programs that need to be funded to make up the gap.
Look at our formal political debates. Candidates don’t have nuanced discussions on policy or philosophical differences, they rack up 15 second sound bites that can be played on the prime time news. If their ideology can’t be summarized in bite-sized form, they will surely lose.
What has happened is that the collective attention span has plummeted so precipitously that our minds, instead of saying "the issue is complicated, so I will think about it later and over a longer period of time" it has begun shoehorning hard problems and debates into much smaller "buckets" of philosophical belief systems. If we cannot categorize a particular debate, person or philosophy as "yay" or "nay" then our minds will ignore it, lash out or force it to be simpler.
This has contributed a lot to the polarization of political discourse as well. You can't hold nuanced, "gray area" thoughts on a matter: you either fall in red or fall in blue. You're an anarchist or a liberal, a Democrat or Republican, pro-choice or pro-life, pro-gun or pro-child. Aside from the many other reasons we're polarized, I think we've been conditioned to not accept nuanced and complex arguments/debates.
We have to break out of the cages that the Twitterized mind has made for us and start talking and thinking more deeply, because the only ideologies that can fit in a 280 character Tweet are the ones we should fear.
Until next week!
Thanks so much for reading this week’s edition of Valhalla Research Weekly. If you enjoyed it, I would appreciate you sharing it out with your friends, family, pets, alternate personalities and anyone else you think might enjoy it.
Until next week!