Everyone seems to know exactly why, but he hasn’t said. My answer is…
I don’t know.
But speaking as a very minor Twitter celebrity who gets a tiny fraction of the attention Whedon gets, the more followers you have, the more Twitter becomes a firehose of hot steaming hatred. If you’re a feminist, multiply the volume by 10 (if a feminist woman, multiply it by 100). I’m at the threshold of what I can manage personally — I block a lot of people — and there are few days when I’ve checked in and found hundreds of raging argle-bargle blurts, and I just walk away for a day or two, until it dies down.
It doesn’t matter what you do. If you write something that a thousand people find wonderful, that just means there will be another thousand people who hate you for it.
The only way to ‘win’ at Twitter is to a) be so blandly inoffensive and uninteresting that no one cares about you, or b) be a fucking troll who shouts stupid things at people and gets insta-blocked by everyone except other fucking trolls. Those people find it a calm and quiet place where they can indulge themselves without interruption. People who are intelligently challenging or have complex positions that don’t fit neatly into boxes, like Whedon, are going to find Twitter to be a hell-hole.
So I wouldn’t pin the blame for driving Whedon away on any faction. Twitter social interactions simply do not scale well, and Whedon was at a level where the volume was deafening.
I’ll also say this: being a man and supporting feminism means constantly running the risk of stepping on land mines. It’s not as hard as being a woman, but we can’t possibly understand the experience of being a woman, and we can be constantly surprised and find that we’ve screwed up. It’s tiring, and there’s always the temptation of running back to the bar and joining the bros and not having to care about half the population of the world.
It’s terribly unfair, I know, that we men have the privilege of being able to step away from the minefield, but we also tend to be total klutzes at navigating it, so we get blown up now and then. I wouldn’t be surprised if Whedon wasn’t taking a break from the stress, because he can.
Also, because I’m still willing to blunder into the minefield, I’ve read a fair number of feminist perspectives on Whedon’s work, and some thoroughly hate him and think he’s an arrogant guy appropriating femininity to advance masculine perspectives, and others think he’s relatively enlightened, for a man. No one seems to think he’s the perfect paragon of flawless feminism. I like his work, because if nothing else, he makes his women characters interesting and complex and central to the story, even if they’re staggering down a few well-worn tropes (Dollhouse really bugged me, for instance: Stepford Femme Fatales).
For what it’s worth, I rather liked this analysis of Black Widow, Feminist Action Hero. But I can also see how she would trigger the Twitter Hose o’ Hate.
And of course, right after I post this, Whedon explains himself. I have the consolation of knowing I pretty much was exactly right.
If only someone thought of asking him directly … “Joss Whedon Calls “Horsesh*t” On Reports He Left Twitter Because Of Militant Feminists”
Hmm, I haven’t signed up for Twitter yet.
I think I’ll keep it that way.
Wrong answer, Neil Rickert. It’s entertaining and interesting. You should sign up, and then give up only once you’ve gotten up around 500,000-1,000,000 followers. That’s when it starts to break down.
The real question is, why would Whedon, or anyone else, join Twitter in the first place? I’ve never heard of any instance where Twitter was the best, or only, useful source of information or connection.
1. Quit with the condescending mockery of Twitter. We get it, you are too good for it, etc. etc. Move on. (I say this as someone who also doesn’t use Twitter)
2. By god, some of that stuff from Whedon is disappointing.
Poopyhead@3 says, “It [twitter]’s entertaining and interesting.” Perhaps for you. Not for me. I have no numbers to back this up, but to me it seems most of the content manages to be both pointless and boring. I cannot recall any twatter that sticks in the mind. The technology is inept (exceptionally frustrating). I’ve never really bothered to look into its privacy protections so cannot comment on that per se, but its technical ineptness would make me suspicious of both its protections and policies.
I signed up for Twitter in 2008, couldn’t make heads or tails out of the point of the site, and never used it…until earlier this year, when I had a change of heart and gave it another try. It’s useful for keeping up with writers in between their blog posts.
After finishing the first Avengers film, Whedon took a creative vacation that involved making his adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing. I think it’s to be expected for him to step away into his personal creative process after finishing a behemoth of a project like these Marvel movies are.
Twitter is a tool. If you buy a hammer and leave it in the middle of your floor and keep stubbing your toe – is it fair to declare, “Hammers suck!”? Or maybe you just don’t know how to use the tool.
I use Twitter to: check up on road conditions, find audition notices, get reminders about events, win tickets, engage on certain subjects, see real-time updates on world events – and sometimes just engage in pointless and boring interactions just like in real space.
This article is a couple years old but still relevant:
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/17/how_twitter_fuels_black_activism/
Raging Bee
FUCKING FERGUSON.
And if Twitter is useless, pointless, and boring to you, that’s fucking fine. But stop with this “But why?“. It’s not an honest question and it’s fucking irritating as fuck, especially after all the social justice happening we’ve talked about on fucking Twitter.
Fucking Ferguson, for fuck sake. There’s fucking more I’m sure, but goddamn. “I can’t remember any instance…” You’re not fucking trying.
Also, your Twitter feed will only be as good as the people you follow. Also, ditto anteprepro #6.
Raging Bee
Are you aware of rq’s wonderful work on the “this morning in America” threads? Do you know where she and many people who post onformation there get that stuff? Right, Twitter. Activists in Ferguson and Baltimore use Twitter for live covering on the ground and also for their safety, making sure there’s an audience watching.
Do you have any idea about how much of the blog content you probably enjoygets distributed via Twitter? It’s a bit like saying you don’t see the point of delivery trucks because you get your bread at the supermarket…
—
Could all the smug “I don’t even have
a TVa Twitter account” folks just STFU?If Twitter is not to your liking, fine. I don’t have a facebook account. You know what I don’t do? Jump into any discussion about harassment on Facebook telling people smugly how it’s their fault for using that medium.
1. You are boring
2. You are victim blaming and it’s not cool.
This is a very good advice on how Whedon might take this incident and it helped me to also gain perspective on it. I especially like that you point out that the experience of having a bunch of internet trolls after you on Twitter (or where ever) is different if you are, for example, a man who has stepped on an internet land mine from a group that you can simply walk away from.
Elsewhere it is being said that those who are attacking Whedon are typical of sjw’s . But I have found that that is an entirely too broad and unfair generalization. Every movement has a breadth of adherents and maybe its trolls.
Twitter is the internet’s version of casual conversation — it’s where people can just speak up about what they care about right now. It’s a good thing, in principle, and you’re missing out if you’re not part of it. Unfortunately, the implementation is lacking in tools to properly curate the experience — the cacophony can get overwhelming.
As has been pointed out, it is the place where the average citizen can express themselves on the spot, in the middle of breaking events. All you need is a cell phone and 30 seconds to be heard.
While it makes a difference in socially important moments, it’s also really useful at conferences. Suddenly, an event that used to be one-way, with a person at a lectern talking at everyone, becomes an opportunity for discussion and questions among the audience — they can chat without disrupting the talk. Some people hate that, especially the speakers, since they’re left out of the fun, but I’ve found it can enrich the experience.
The problem with Black Widow is that she’s the only female main character. Unlike the male characters, who each get their own thing, Black Widow is “the woman” and has to be all things to all people in that regard. So of course some people are going to get the “thing” they wanted from the character, and everyone else is going to be disappointed or worse. The solution is not just to write Black Widow a different way, but to have enough well-written main female characters that no one has to just be “the woman.”
Okay, I’ll go all smug and say that I do NOT have a Twitter acct and refuse Twitter’s email attempts to lure me in. BUT~~~
not my point.
I am still puzzled why there is so much upset when someone makes a big show of Leaving twitter.
Like people announcing they refuse to watch NBC, cuz of that awful SNL show they have every Saturday night. Who the hell cares about what other people watch on TV?
A think Joss jumped out of Twitter cuz of all the negs the twitterverse was projecting at him, so he announced he was leaving so the twitter could start shouting at somebody who might actually read their rants. What puzzles me is the eruption of twitternoise about the departure of Whedon from the twitterverse. Does the twitterverse hinge on his presence?
Twitter can be entertaining and informative. I can’t say I’ve regretted my time on Twitter on either of those fronts. That said, it can also be massively intimidating and an enormous time-sink. I don’t blame Joss Whedon for wanting to get away from that, especially if he was finding it hard to control its intrusion into his life. I will miss reading his random thoughts though.
Improbable Joe, in the latest film they do introduce a new kickass female character, Scarlet Witch. Though she is not an Avenger (and for most of the film is causing their problems), she is a step in the right direction. (Though the problem with Avengers 2 is that Black Widow’s major role in the film is a budding romance and her major scene is about her dramatic revelation that she was sterilized and cannot have teh babeez. And that Scarlet Witch is significantly defined by her relationship to her brother, though she is the more important of the two, so that just might serve to humanize her).
There’s the “heckler’s veto” and then there’s the “barnacles veto” …
One forum where I used to post, I had several extremely persistent followers, who followed me only so that they could endlessly argue about anything I said. One of them was quite clear that that was his agenda; he actually didn’t believe in what he was saying, he was just trying to push me into blocking him because then he’d feel he’d won some great victory. I used to think of him and his compatriots as “barnacles” — they’re just stupid semi-parasitic creatures that do nothing but slow you down and make you waste energy. Eventually I just stopped posting entirely because I realized that they had sucked all the fun out of the thing for me; knowing that any time I posted anything would result in a protracted micturating-contest, was utterly joyless. So, they declared victory. But they’re still just barnacles.
For the most part I can understand what Whedon is trying to say, but like anteprepro @ 5 I found the following passage to be at best unfortunate;
I know that there are elements within the broader feminist movement who hold toxic opinions – I’m looking at you, TERFs – but I am far from convinced that this is what Whedon is talking about here. The term ‘radical feminist’ does have a very lamentable history of being used as a dog whistle by MRAs and assorted other brands of misogynist, and that alone makes the chocie of words here unfortunate, even before we get to the curious talk of ‘breeds’ of feminism.
As for the whole thing about different schools of feminism and liberalism attacking one another rather than ‘fighting for the cause’, I would point out that fighting ‘for the cause’ could prove difficult when differing groups can’t necessarily agree on what that cause is or how to delimit the ‘legitimate’ membership of that struggle. Whedon seems to assume that the internal debate within the broad feminist movement amounts to pointless bickering and/or petty back-biting, when there are actually substantive topics under discussion, such as the intersection between feminist issues and racial equality issues, with many feminists of colour justifiably feeling that too many of the high profile feminist voices in the movement do not reflect the issues facing women of colour, and indeed some White feminists can be all together too quick to ascribe racially stereotypical explanations for why certain societies or social groupings have particular problems with regard to gender equality.
There are similar intersections between feminism and LGBTQ rights issues, with again some voices within the mainstream feminist movement perhaps being less sympathetic than they might be to issues affecting LGBTQ people, and other groups on the fringes of feminism being actively hostile or even espousing a nauseatingly bigoted eliminationist rhetoric toward trans* people worthy of the most reactionay of patriarchal transphobes (oh look – there are those TERFs again).
These divisions are important. Indeed, they are foundational to whether feminism will remain a political movement and an identity signifier that people of conscience will be prepared to embrace into the future. if I were given to a rather florrid and lyrical turn of phrase (and if I didn’t think the notion of a soul was equal parts toxic and ridiculous) , I might say that these are the battle grounds upon which the war for the soul of feminism is being waged (yeah – that sounds cheesy). these are not issues that can just be brushed under the carpet until the patriarchy is vanquished because they represent important issues of social justice and equality in their own right, and because the feminist struggle doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it is and must remain part of the broader struggle for equality for all marginalised groups if society is going to meaningfully improve, and that means that it is not acceptable to gloss over discriminatory attitudes (that, ironically, are often founded upon patriarchal cultural memes) within broader feminism in the name of an expedient, short term appeal to unity.
As atheists, we have all seen where calls for unity at all costs can lead, and what kinds of truly repugnant people it can force you to call your allies. In the same way that I don’t assume that someone is my ally just because they don’t believe in god (lots of heinous misgynists and hardcore economic libertarians have shown that they are more than capable of rejecting the notion of god while simultaneously being truly reprehensible people), I also don’t assume that someone is a worthwhile ally just because they identify as a feminist, at least not until I can be certain that I know what they really mean when they say that.
As PZ says in the OP, this would seem to be one of those mines that Whedon has just blundered into.
Having reread my post, I realise that the pharse used by Whedon was ‘militant feminist’ rather than ‘radical feminist’, but ultimately the two terms basically amount to the same thing, and have very similar histories with regard to their use.
Must learn to proof read more carefully in future…
Just going to chime in to add one more “oh fuck off” to anyone self-importantly declaring how above Twitter they are. Because Ferguson. Because so much of the social justice discussion that’s worth paying attention to happens on Twitter. Twitter provides a platform to tons of people with extremely worthwhile things to say who wouldn’t otherwise have one. It’s almost like a variant of tone trolling. Platform Trolling.
I don’t use Twitter but I have absolutely stopped sneering at it.
Because Ferguson.
Gregory Greenwood@#20
‘militant feminist’ rather than ‘radical feminist’, but ultimately the two terms basically amount to the same thing
I’m not sure they’re the same thing. Militancy describes how aggressively you want to promote your views, whereas radicalism describes how far from the mainstream those views are. A militant whatever might engage with their target to the point of being irritating, whether those views are ones the target agrees with or not. A radical might have views that the target finds challenging to comprehend or internalize. With regards to feminism, many people seem to lump both those properties into the legendary StrawFeminist (or Andrea Dworkin) – a person who is both radical and militant, and therefore incomprehensible and attractive to tone-trolls.
You are victim blaming and it’s not cool.
Misrepresenting what other people say is even less cool. Pointing out problems with a particular product or service is not “victim-blaming.”
Raging Bee: Talking loudly about how useless Twitter is and how superior you are for not using it, in the context of talking harassment, is kind of victim blaming. In addition to just being dismissive and myopic, for reasons already mentioned by others. Largely: Because Ferguson.
Raging Bee
But you weren’t pointing out a problem with the platform. You were just mouthing off that you don’t use it personally because lol why bother. And when discussing an actual problem with the platform that make people like trolling, harassing sexist/racist etc. assholes, saying “Why are you even on there?” is indeed victim blaming. Just like someone say “But why were they even there?” after someone was raped.
And you’re pointedly ignoring the facts showing you’re opinion is bullshit. Like FERGUSON. <—–All caps twice with other comments saying the same damn thing and no response? Go fucking yourself asshole.
I’ve occasionally found Twitter useful for exactly the stuff people upthread have pointed out: as an on-the-ground crowdsource-type source of news (which may or may not be a bit gossipy) it’s got definite strengths. Want to know who else has lost power in a blackout (provided you can get it through a working cell tower)? Want to know what’s the deal with all the sirens you just heard? Want to try to get a sense of what people are saying about event X outside ‘official’ sources? Well worth checking.
But I’m actually almost entirely off social media myself, including blogs, apart from occasional comments around here, of late, have been quite some months now, may well remain so a while longer, I think. Reasons maybe a bit like Whedon’s, I guess, notwithstanding the noise I was dealing with was orders of magnitude below his. Just got to thinking the bump and bang of it all was getting a bit much, and I’ve a family I’m supposed to be spending time with, a job I’m supposed to be doing, and, really, if I haven’t the time for more involved discussion of things discussed anyway, a) it’s not real rewarding for me, and b) I’m not sure my being there really does anyone much good, let alone me. Oh, and yeah, c), I really was getting to think I wasn’t getting other things I wanted to do done.
I do think sometimes, speaking of, there’s a much deeper discussion to be had and consideration due for the dynamics of the various new means of communications and community the network world has spawned, and it really is a bit mad, the rate at which things are changing, lives are changing, and at which the social world is changing, as a consequence. The technology changes so fast it’s pretty hard for anyone to get a grip on how to use it well, what it’s going to do to them to use it at all. Notwithstanding my actual bread and butter comes from network gear, I sometimes find myself entertaining fantasies of retreating to some Pacific island somewhere (presumably one of the ones with sufficient elevation that it will still generally be above the waves in a few decades) and living on coconuts and whatever seafood I can catch. It just seems less trouble than dealing with the press of technology and humanity the world is becoming.
But getting back to reality, and as a somewhat more focused meander: the general poison on the net from trolls and barnacles mentioned above isn’t some academic curiosity, and the incredibly shallow offered notions you might hear that oh, you can just block/stop reading aren’t by any means a satisfactory solution. The reality is: this is the world we live in now, and I’d like to think we could somehow make it a better one. I can go partial hermit for a bit, sure, and maybe that’s better for me anyway, against my previous level of involvement (and I was kinda an early adopter; got a little more mileage than some, I think, already; I figure it might well be time for a break), but I get to thinking the fact that there are such swaths of deeply dishonest ranting haters making such a mess of communications is about as good news for our civilization at large and about as sustainable as, well, a lot of the less virtual messes in international politics, trade, and the environment. We’re not going to have much of a world to live in, if it continues.
… oh, and also, and for that reason, what Whedon said, about Sarkeesian and people who generally do try to stay on, face down the frothing, and make the world a little better.
@anteprepro#25
Talking about how Twitter is useless
Talking about how superior one is for not using it
These are not the same thing.
I can say Twitter is generally a wasteland of incoherent jabbering and I have offered no opinion at all as to whether I am or am not superior. In fact, I do use it, that’s how I feel I can say it is generally a wasteland of incoherent jabbering.
If you are inferring that someone who doesn’t use Twitter is superior, or thinks they are superior for not using it, that’s on you.
http://penny-arcade.com/comic etc
Thanks for your help, Marcus Ranum. Great work.
Marcus Ranum @ 23;
I expressed myself poorly – I meant to say that they are treated as if they are the same thing by the kind of people who use the terms as imprecations. This is similar to the way that the terms ‘radical’ and ‘militant’ atheist are used; asking for evidence before believing that a magic sky fairly created the universe by magic should not be considered radical, and saying “no, I’m not angry at your god, I simply don’t believe that it exists. What makes me angry are the terrible things done in the name of, and with the notional validation offered by, that imaginary being” should not be considered militant, and yet not only are atheists regularly described as being radical and militant, but the two phrases are habitually used interchangeably by our detractors, and seem to have taken on the new meaning of ‘not saying/thinking what we want them to say/think.’
As you say;
Which makes Whedon’s choice of the phrase ‘militant feminists’ unfortunate to say the least.
arcus Ranum
Except your sentence and Raging Bee’s comment is remarkedly different and there’s fucking context. Like your “generally” instead of Raging Bee’s absolutes. And the questioning of why other people would be on it since Raging Bee doesn’t find it useful and that’s what’s important.
Saying “Why would anyone be on it? I’ve never heard it being useful” and then fucking ignoring the facts on why that’s bullshit, especially when it’s a huge social justice issue like Ferguson does come off as smug. Because it’s essentially dismissing the oppressed and saying “But I don’t have that problem so why bother?” It’s fucking privileged as shit because Raging Bee can get the information after other sources pick up and be lazy with “Well, I still found out with other sources”, while the people on the ground are trying to get noticed and they do so on Twitter.
It is useful, just not for Raging Bee who’s pointedly ignoring Ferguson and apparently doesn’t even give a fuck enough about black activists to walk that bullshit back. This isn’t a spoon issue or a time issue or anything like that. It’s a “I don’t give a fuck” issue, and if that’s not true of Raging Bee, they need to stop fucking acting like it.
If Joss Whedon (or anybody else) quit Twitter because he was being attacked by thin-skinned fanboys like Patton Oswalt making “THIS ISN’T THE EXACT MOVIE I THOUGHT IT SHOULD BE!!!” type rants, everybody would blame Joss Whedon for being thin skinned. So, why is it when people thought he was leaving to escape “militant feminists” it’s the feminists fault for chasing away Joss Whedon?
I have no problem with (non-violent) “militant” activists of any persuasion. They’re the only ones that ever get things done. It’s the “reasonable” ones that bug me. They’re the ones that go on venues hostile to their own cause and attack their own side for being too militant. Completely useless, the lot of them.
slithey tove @15
“I am still puzzled why there is so much upset when someone makes a big show of Leaving twitter”
Tangentially, they don’t even have to make a big show in my experience. People develop quite strong attachments to communications software and the culture that develops in them. It’s weird yet strangely predictable at the same time, when I think about it.
I’ve seen people quit youtube, myspace, facebook, message boards and garner similar reactions. It’s sort of equal parts sorrow like they’re leaving town for good and a parochial “Fine! Go then! Think you’re too good for us?” type attitude.
We’re probably all just villagers at heart and now we have techno villages.
Not exactly OT, but speaking of Joss Whedon and feminism, Target has an ad where the Avengers action figures battle the Ultron action figure in a Target parking lot. It’s cute, until you notice that only the male Avengers are in the ad! Once again Black Widow has been erased.
It is useful, just not for Raging Bee who’s pointedly ignoring Ferguson
I am quite confident that if Twitter didn’t exist, there would have been plenty of great coverage of Ferguson through other channels. I also imagine it wouldn’t have been broken down into arbitrary little haiku-like chunks.*
Admittedly, Richard Dawkins’ Twitter gyrations don’t negate the value of the Twitter-reporting of Ferguson. But he tries.
(* that gives me a great idea: someone needs to write a website where you can only post things in haiku form)
Twitter is as engaging, entertaining, informative, and interesting as the people you follow.
If you follow interesting people, Twitter is the greatest thing ever.
You know, as a person who used to watch a lot of TV, I always laughed at those who so very nobly didn’t. I don’t twitter, not out of a sense of superiority, out of a sense having only so much time to spend in front of the computer every day and I know how my mind works. The few blogs I follow are bad enough.
My point is that if you find nothing of value on TV or twitter or what ever (and I should mention that I rarely watch TV now–though there are a few shows I wait for Netflicks or Hulu) then you should not watch or twitter. Easy. But why, oh why, do so many people think that such decisions are matters of moral superiority? I can confess to some feelings of moral superiority to such people, even though I know that is pretty silly of me.
I hate “reality” shows. I like police procedurals. I am perfectly well aware that the latter have no more artistic merit (well, rarely, anyway), and certainly are of no greater “value” to society than the former and an argument can be made that the popularity of the latter has indirectly caused a lot of trouble in our society because entirely too many adults don’t know what “fiction” means, much less “creative license” or even understand the consequences of “tell the story in 45 minutes”. I do not consider myself superior to those who like reality shows. As long as they don’t make me watch.
I do not consider myself superior to those who engage in twitter or spend all day on Facebook. We all have our preferences and as long as you are not hurting somebody, for dog’s sake, enjoy, and let others enjoy what they enjoy without you sneering at them. Is your ego really that fragile?
Marcus Ranum
I’m not at all confident that would have happened.
If Twitter didn’t exist, no-one outside of greater St. Louis would ever have heard about the shooting(s) in Ferguson.
Kind of like, without Twitter, the rape of Savannah Dietrich would have gone down the memory hole.
Same with the Steubenville rape.
Same with the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of the police.
I could go on, for quite a while.
Twitter allows the possibility of gatekeeper-free reporting. It is because non-journalist citizens can now directly report their experience, and because there is no editor to say, “we don’t want to antagonize the police who do such good work in the community” or “we wouldn’t want to ruin that poor boy’s life because of some youthful hijinks” and soften the story, or kill it entirely, that we are suddenly hearing these stories in all their raw horror. Twitter (and independent blogs, too, shouldn’t forget those) are forcing the mainstream media to report on these and other issues, which means politicians are being forced to comment and sometimes even act.
Twitter is the revolution.
I tried following PZ on Twitter for a bit. I had to stop. It was like standing next to some kind of distended, voiding orifice– an enormous, terrible funnel vomiting out an endless stream of human excrement, broken glass and pure, condensed willful ignorance 24/7– and being caught in the spray therefrom. A never-ending torrent of Slymepitters, creationists, kooks, quacks, and regular common-or-garden trolls all jabbering away like meth-addled baboons, poking their furious 140-character missives into Twitter with shaking, spunk-crusted fingers. How can you stand it, PZ?
Marcus Ranum, I heard about Ferguson on Twitter nearly a WEEK before I saw any coverage on regular TV or the NYTimes (which, yes, I still read).
Twitter is faster than any other medium at the moment. That East Coast earthquake a few years back? When I felt it I tweeted, “Holy crap, we just had an earthquake!” and then watched similar tweets pour in…in geographical order. Within 60 seconds of the quake, I knew it had originated somewhere south of Washington, DC.
Twitter isn’t a great medium for investigative news, and it can propagate shit as fast as it propagates gold. But for breaking news, local crises, and stories that “mainstream” news doesn’t want to cover, it’s outstanding.
It’s also where the mainstream outlets go to get ideas and info. If you’re at the scene of a big event/crisis (e.g. the explosion and fire on 2nd Avenue in NYC a month or two ago) and tweeting pictures, I guarantee you’ll get requests from the major news outlets for permission to use your photos.
It’s all in how one uses it, really. I only follow a couple dozen people (some of whom almost never post anything), mostly friends. 90% of my twitter time is just chatting with my friends, a kind of open IM-ing. But I’m not famous, so I get that luxury.
@34 Muz — that’s a fine insight. At first my reaction (and please, no “Dear Muslima” comparisons), was why is it such a big deal that a straight white extraordinarily rich third-generation Hollywood aristocracy preppy trustfunder decided to take a break from one of his social media outlets? We’re supposed to feel sorry for this shining example of how the American Dream only exists for the filthy rich and is a complete sham for everybody else? I like him and his films and his series and his unapologetic feminism and atheism. But in terms of any empathy that the world is ganging up on Joss Wheedon, I just can’t summon much. Your point is therefore enlightening — it’s his fans and followers who have had their sense of community undermined by him getting the bum’s rush from trolls. Fair enough.
I left twitter months ago. It really wasn’t doing anything for me. Now I’m trying to limit my FB time and I find I’m not as angry as I was when I was more active on FB.
It’s all in how you use it. Follow people who only tweet crap, and your feed will be full of crap. Follow people who do important and interesting things, and you’ll get a wealth of information out of it.
I greatly prefer it to other social media because it doesn’t ask too much of me personally. It doesn’t want to tag people in my photos, it doesn’t try to wring extra information out of me, it doesn’t tell me who in my feed I should be paying attention to or not (although they keep threatening to start doing so). I can dip in and out of it at any time without worrying that I’ll have missed someone’s birthday announcement or whatever, and there are never any doubts as to whether something is being shared with friends or family or the world.
I have a twitter account, I signed up so I could get all the Ferguson news, but outside of that, I have never used it. Twitter strikes me as a massive time sink, one I can’t afford, so I keep my distance.
@drken 33
Simply put, because it gives an excuse to bash feminists. Which is really ironic considering all the “militant atheists” who’ve jumped on that bandwagon.
it’s all about what you choose to follow – make good choices, and you’ll find interesting and useful stuff. Make poor choices, and you’ll end up with a bunch of garbage. That’s more or less true of twitter, facebook, blogs, usenet (if it still exists), mailing lists, and so on.
but feel free to keep arguing over who has the best window dressing. It’s been an internet tradition since 1969.
I love twitter. But I really don’t know how high-profile people survive there lacking the anonymity of a pseudonym. Here in Australia, we just had a soccer reporter sacked for tweeting unpleasant facts about WW1, by means of trolls and RW journalists petitioning the communications minister on twitter to put pressure on the guy’s employer, which he promptly did.
I know the news from twitter before they’re on TV. I get exciting sciencey stuff. I know if my train is running on time, or where there’s bushfires. Couldn’t live without it. But it took a year of blocking and filtering to make it a pleasant experience, that’s for sure.
Who cares? I like Joss’ work, and if he could knock out another show like Firefly in the peace and quiet, great. But why is it the concern of the interwebs because someone leaves a platform?
Unless Zuckerberg deletes his FB account, I guess. Or Myers leaves this blog site.
I wasn’t a big fan of Firefly or Dollhouse. Liked Avengers, haven’t seen Ultron yet. But that’s not important. Not everything every hollywood type does is good or for everyone. As for twitter, there are other media out there capable of transmitting messages, so Twitter itself is not uniquely necessary. Not saying it’s wrong or that people who don’t use it are superior, just that, like hollywood tv /movies productions, Twitter is not for everyone. Me, I remember telling my friends not to bother with Usenet.
And, if in that alternate universe, a different micro-blogging social media platform emerged to enable activists to circumvent the mainstream media, I’m equally sure that you and others would be smugly preaching about how unnecessary you found said platform, how noisy and obnoxious it was, and how above it all you were.
In this universe, I was reading this thread while periodically checking in on my Twitter feed.
Hey, look, a photo of transgender rights activist Janet Mock on her new show, “So POPular.” If it weren’t for Twitter I probably wouldn’t know she has a TV show now. Very cool.
Next: Climate change activist Mike Hudema tweeted a link to Bill McKibbon’s latest at HuffPo. Cool. RT. Will check it out in a minute.
The next two: out of context conversation about DJing, latin music, and hip hop. Keep scrolling. (If I were curious, I could click on the conversation and see the context.) I follow a few DJs so I can catch it when they release a new mix. Once I had an exchange with DJ Kalkutta of NYC that ended with her offering to put me on the guest list if I was ever in the city. Still haven’t taken her up on it.
Next: one of my favorite tweeps, @HarrietThugman: “But underneath all of this cynical wizardry is a girl who wants to heal wounds with words and essays. Y’know?” Yeah. I think I know.
Next: @RubenBolling of “Tom the Dancing Bug” fame says: “According to a random sampling conducted in and around my hotel, 95% of the people in Toronto are cartoonists. 5% are bartenders or baristas” OK. That’s vaguely funny, would probably be funnier if I lived in Toronto? I did have an interesting conversation with Bolling on the subject of Charlie Hebdo once. Dunno how else I would have had that chance.
Next: a cool crochet pattern from the Crochet account I follow.
Next: @deray (Deray Mckesson, one of the best-known citizen journalists who emerged from the Ferguson movement) tweets a link to an article in the Baltimore sun about the drug war, race, marijuana, and the law.
So… cacophonous? Overwhelming? Not for me. A timesink, sure, just like FB and video games. Full of substance-free nattering? Absolutely not, and anyone who asserts this is simply outing themself as an ignoramus.
Stop clutching your damn pearls about Twitter. Use it or don’t, but get the fuck over its existence already.