Thread by @Noahpinion

Twitter basically took the comments sections of articles and blog posts and imagined: "What if all discussion were just that?"

By utterly leveling the playing field for public discussion, Twitter smashed media elitism.

It also forced smart and honest people to spend near-infinite time debunking stupidity and disinformation.

A large % of viral tweets are either inaccurate or distorted. Naturally, well-informed and reasonable people quickly swarm to correct each one. But even if they succeed, one random fool just wasted hours of well-informed and reasonable people's lives...for no social gain.

Media before Twitter was often a cozy elitist club where dipshits could get away with saying wrong things if they knew the right people and paid their dues.

Media after Twitter is a constant neverending exhausting war that sucks away people's lives.

Media stupidity existed before Twitter and it exists now that we have Twitter.

The difference is that it used to not take up so much of our *time*.

The great illusion of Twitter is that it will end. That if we just smack down *this* bit of online stupidity, that then we'll be able to get back to productive work.

But it never ends. There will be another dumb or dishonest viral tweet. And another. And another. Forever.

For a well-informed reasonable person, Twitter creates the anxious feeling that if they walk away from the platform, the idiots and villains will dominate the national conversation and society will rapidly go to hell.

And the crazy thing is...that feeling might be right!!

The existence of this platform has redirected vast amounts of human energy, time, and intelligence into the neverending, exhausting treadmill of smacking down online stupidity.

What will get society out of this trap?

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