Alan Jacobs


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Business critics say Twitter is falling because the suits don’t know what do to with the service. In reality, it’s failing because our social mobs know just what to do with it. Twitter is getting worse because it helps us argue — and believe — that everyone else is getting worse.  

The debasement of Twitter indicates that many of us are ready to slip into verbal brutality to show that just one worldview — ours, of course — can annihilate the competition. Twitter used to be a place to escape from the uniformity and hyperventilation of the “mainstream media,” where the ideological id has long run rampant. Now, Twitter is a megaphone for the worldview wars. It fosters constant competition among our claims that everyone should care and act as we do.