Charlie,
Really? Do you actually think that the digital backyard fence full of gossiping "neighbors" is real life?
It's your world, not mine. If that means I'm not living in the real world then I am so, so, so very grateful!
2
People trained in Marxism think dialectically. For example: Thesis: Print media made democracy possible. Two-way and multi-point, it was the Gutenberg Galaxy . . . Antithesis: Broadcasting destroyed democracy. One way, instantaneous and global in reach, it was the Marconi Monologue . . . Synthesis: Social Media (Twitter) makes democracy possible once more. Instantaneous and global in reach (like broadcasting), yet two-way and multi- point (like print), in the long run, Social Media = Socialism.
3
Yes. Twitter is real life in the jungle. There are no norms, no rules, all weapons are legal. Alternative facts and libel are welcome and truth is what you want it to be. The worst punishment is getting kicked out, but of course you can always come back and get back at it.
3
The Internet was okay until we got superfluous entities like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Somehow people were convinced that these were necessary.
Naturally they mostly serve to dumb down the culture.
And naturally the rubes love it all.
3
1. Please define "elites".
2 please define "real life"
2
Twitter being real life is perhaps true, but is it a good thing, living in soundbites instead of sentences & paragraphs? Look who's the twitter king, a guy with a fourth grade vocabulary who doesn't believe the news unless it comes from Fox.
Of course, twitter is real life. The guy in the White House proves it every day. Doesn't mean I subscribe.
2
Doesn't the flop of insufferably woke candidates like Beto and Warren show otherwise?
Let's see - we have a NYT opinion writer on technology and media telling us that Twitter is something more than an utter frivolity.
I'm reminded of a line in the movie "Blazing Saddles" where the politician (played by Mel Brooks) says "We've got to protect our phony baloney jobs!"
1
Who are these people who have time to pick fights online and in Twitter? It is similar to dogs barking at sun.
If it can be said on Twitter, it really shouldn't be said.
Twitter is not real life.
2
Twitter is a waste of time because it's filled with junk comments, snark, me-me, whinging, hate, etc. Tried if for a few months, saw that it wasn't worth anything, and cancelled my account. Facebook -- same thing -- time waster.
If we had a sufficiently educated public that wasn't in constant need of "entertaining" there would be no twitter, facebook, instagram etc.
good way to find food trucks. and a lot of other truck.
Twitter is not ‘real life’ when people can use whatever names and identities they want. It’s full of trolls and bots as well. Don’t let people lead you to believe Twitter is real life. Only if you chose to view a skewed world through a virtual platform, ok then. But never think that’s real life. Step out your door, talk to your neighbor. They ARE real.
Twitter is real life, yes, as much as Westrlemania is also real life. However, it is not an accurate representation of public sentiment. If twitter represents something is the worst that human boredom and attention-seeking can do to civilization. Pundits and wannabe-pundits shouting at each other.
1
On Twitter, 70% of users support Bernie and the other 30% support trump. Everyone else is mercilessly mocked in vitriolic and personal terms. Twitter is such a gross misrepresentation of the American public at a whole that I don’t even know where to start.
2
As it has always been, Twitter is Bumper Sticker thoughts for Bumper Sticker minds. Read nothing that doesn’t have an editor between you and the information.
1
I just so despise the name of Twitter which is where Trump goes to tweet hate, lies, and to have the cultists intelligent enough to pass on his vulgar rhetoric to the bottom 2/3 of his cult who aren't on Twitter. This is such an insult to real birds everywhere, who sing and actually tweet sharing their sweetnees with us. I wish they could organize a revolt whereby millions of them would fly over the Whitehouse lawn as he boards a helicopter, others to Mar-a Largo, and still others to Vegas and all his hotels and gulf courses everywhere, showering him with that other thing that they do so well. Is Twitter real? Let's put it this way; It is real to DJT. More real than an actual human standing face to face with him. He isn't the only one of course. Just the most "Stable Genius" twitterer of the times in which we live. To my real feathered friends: should you ever decide to party, please invite me. I'll bring an umbrella for myself. Word is umbrellas are are a little too complicated for you know who!
2
#boycotttwitter for a happy healthy life.
1
Young people are on Twitter. I was asked to join it for professional purposes and I don't work in the media. it's real life. trust me. We're not all tweeting, but we're definitely liking certain messages over others.
1
Noise
It’s noise
A mass crowd of armchair quarterbacks wirh zero skin in the game. They’re freely casting darts. Throwing stones. Name calling. Much raking. Spreading untruths.
Judging. Shaming. Mob rule.
Awful
2
It seems to me like a louder and dumber (hello America!) realization of the 3.5% rule. At least the twitter folk care about something, too bad it skews toward passionate intensity. I bet the number of people who ever changed their mind about anything, even something they know they're wrong about, because of tweets approaches zero.
Wrong. If anything Facebook is real life: a bunch of under-informed Americans spreading fake news and cat videos.
3
I think Twitter is real life because the media Twitterati influence one another to make news of events and trends they first give life on Twitter. Then fools like me read this news.
What a depressing thought. God help us if what this article says is actually true. I hope humanity isn't as angry and shallow as the Twitterverse.
2
ah, real life!
ain’t what it used to be is it?
I do not use Twitter. While I may be missing out on "real life" and its messiness and glaring problems sans good fixes that one seems to enjoy on Twitter (I seem to have enough "real life" without this), I do read op-eds and columnists in a number of newspapers.
I always wonder exactly how much influence these "typing fingers" (as opposed to "talking heads") actually have in terms of influencing events and/or policy.
Am I perhaps wasting my time reading Opinion columns that actually use words spelled correctly, sentences and paragraphs?
1
No, Twitter is not real life. Activism on Twitter always appears to have a larger following then it really does. Both right & left. It’s basically just the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. The vast majority of all democrats & republicans have busy lives working and raising families.
If Twitter is your real life, you gotta get out more. Go hug a tree, perhaps. Too much of the digital stuff bends even a good mind, eventually. Nature might give you a chance to restore biorhythms.
Nothing zip nada on Twitter influences me in any way. To me, not that far from bathroom stalls, so no thanks.
A lot of people are criticizing Twitter. There's a lot of dreck out there, but still there are some very good Tweets. The 280 character format doesn't work for complicated thoughts, but it can be great for pithy, funny—and sometimes insightful—comments. Those saying that "Twitter isn't real life" are mostly implying that the opinions heard there are not held by the majority. Maybe. But there's a reason 40% of the people support Trump, and Bernie is leading the Democratic field. Votes in real life are going to those two. Neither may have majority support, but they aren't mere Twitter phenomena: they are the frontrunners in both their parties.
Getting back to the content on Twitter, here's my current pinned tweet (@617to416). I think it was kind of clever, no?
"It used to be said that in America anyone can grow up to be president. Now it's not even necessary to grow up."
1
if only I could escape reality by never having been on Twitter
So I have no real life since I do not twit. None of the people who do tweet affect my life even in the smallest way. I care for zero of any of them, as these millionaires and really famous people care zero for me. Poor, poor pitiful me.
It is wildly naive to say "There’s the obvious literal sense. Twitter is a real-world platform and is used by very real humans."
Have you ever heard of bots???
As someone who is a non-twit, does anyone have a statistic which counts others like me? I think Mr Warzel is living in his Twitterverse with assumptions that all media consumers partake. We don't.
1
Twitter, one more nail in America’s coffin.
1
Twitter is a waste of time.
1
Not just elites.
If Twitter is real life, I’ve opted out. I was a nearly adopter, but quit after the Parkland shooting. I was targeted by Tomi Lahren, who got me banned for 24 hours for terms of service violations. What did I do? I called her out on her vindictive, disgusting victim blame/shame. After I was allowed back, I got swarmed by Russian bots. I complained, and was told by twitter the bots attacking had not violated the terms of service. So it’s pretty clear where @jack stands. If we had any sense or cared about the survival of democracy, we’d shut twitter down.
2
Define "elites."
•••As of this moment, only the Bloomberg campaign knows how to use Twitter against Trump. Every retort to Trump’s insane tweet is a surgical strike that hits where it matters most — Trump’s insecurity about his fakery, bankruptcy, and illiteracy.
•••No wonder Trump is getting afraid and has asked his Russian trolls to support Sanders.
Look at me!
Look at me!
Nope.
1
After the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, the Manhattan-based film critic Pauline Kael apochryphally exclaimed, "How can he be president? No one I know voted for him!" Twitter is the incubator of millions of Pauline Kaels.
Russian bots influence Twitter and Facebook more than real newspapers
First, who, again, exactly are the 'elites?'
That's a word, a term and a label that's been ginned up to the point it makes no sense -- another instance where up is down, where somehow the 'non-elites' (yeah, the ones going to the WH dinners and $10 million+ fundraisers) insist they are the 'regular' people.
I am not fooled.
And no, Twitter is not real life. And the outsize influence a few voices have on this platform is bizarre.
I keep thinking of the historians, writing about this decades from now, trying to explain what in the heck a 'Twitter' was.
If -- a big if -- there are historians, writing and 'decades' yet to come. This big planet could show us all something very soon.
Live accordingly.
1
Twitter is a cesspool.
Anyone who thinks social media of any kind represents real life doesn't have a rea life.
1
“Twitter is like going into a toilet stall and arguing with the graffiti" - Ricky Gervais
Twitter is the septic tank of the internet. Avoid it.
1
Trump says thanks for the approval!!!
1
Twitter’s detested – until one’s arrested…
https://gawker.com/380535%2Famerican-journalism-student-twitters-from-egyptian-jail
Or your flight’s been delayed – and the counter’s congested…
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/travel/airline-customer-service-twitter.html
…
No one blames Outlook or Gmail for the tens of billions of dumb e-mails people send each other every day…
Except for making it too easy to hit the “reply all” button by mistake…
Sooo – just think of Twitter as e-mail, through the other end of the binoculars…
You have to explicitly tell it who are the few people to whom your e-message shouldn’t be sent…
...
It makes poll apps look easy – till a caucus contested…
There is something to be said for face-to-face conversation. I know nothing about Twitter, really, but I recently got an email from a colleague that left me unable to respond in another email. Everything I thought to write either made it sound like I was stupid, or the sender was stupid, when I was simply trying to communicate there was a problem that neither of us caused (or could readily solve at that moment).
So I did not respond in email, but talked to her face-to-face and easily explained the problem in 10 seconds. The problem is still a mystery to both of us, but neither of us felt stupid and both of us know the problem, if not yet the solution.
"Elites" are not a single uniform group.
There's the moneyed elite from industry - oil, retail, or silicon valley. There's the entertainment elite of Hollywood, pop-music, comedians. There's the political elite in the congress, in the senate, in Washington. There's the cultural elite of the New York Times, academia, and other ultra-connected urbanites. There's the broader elite of moderately wealthy specialists (doctors, engineers, lawyers...). There's groups that fall in between (is CNN entertainment or culture?). Etc.
These different groups are all "elites" because they're all hyper-priviledged and disproportionately powerful. But they don't share the same values or the same goals.
Almost all of them are on twitter, but some are much more present than others. Twitter is the place to be for journalists, "influencers", and activists. Twitter best represents the opinions of one small part of the elite: those who side with the entertainers and the lawyers, and against the engineers and the magnates. Those who think race, gender, and sexuality matter, whereas economic equality is a boring problem for has-beens. Those who cancel other people and worry about being cancelled themselves. In short: NYT journalists.
And yeah, the problems of NYT journalists are real problems, their values are real values, their goals are real goals. They're just not at all representative of the problems, goals, or values, of average people. Twitter is real life: it's your life. It's not mine.
1
What/who exactly is an "elite"? Is it just anyone who doesn't attend NASCAR races and/or wear MAGA hats? Is there an income cutoff? An education level cutoff? I'm truly interested.
1
Has anyone done a comparison of facial expressions at a typical trump rally and one by a Democratic candidate? The former redefines dim.
"Legacy political journalist"--great phrase.
Find me an active voter with a Twitter account then you got something. Otherwise it’s a non sequitur.
1
I dropped out of all social media. I doubt I could be happier. Have at it y'all
1
What the author fails to realize is that Twitter is what is called a "biased sample", not reflective of the true population. I am a Physician and Engineer. I work 80 hrs a week consistently. I do my best to stay informed via traditional, vetted journalism: NYT, The Economist, The Atlantic. I would never join Twitter because it is the mental diarrhea of the masses, short in characters and in content. My opinion will never be amplified on Twitter. It is a tool for those with more time and less thought.
3
wrong - i fight with the Bros all the time on HuffPo - the same few are on 24/7 - they dont work they just post. Thats not real life.
So then I guess my antipathy towards Sanders based solely on the overwhelming nastiness of his supporters on Twitter is okay? I mean, it being “real life” and all.
Agreed. Twitter is real life, just like Real Housewives of Hollywood, Naked and Afraid, Love Island, etc.
A space in which you can post any lie, shopped photo, or doctored video is real only in the sense that lies, deceit and deception have always been a part of real life. It's just that the internet is the loudest megaphone ever created. If I am loud enough, often enough, I can drown out facts and the truth. Just ask the Donald.
1
That's good news to Twitter and their 1/3 bogus account numbers.
How many Twitter accounts are empty Russian bots? They represent people, I guess, Russian agents having a laugh and being paid for it, but in terms of "real life," they're not it.
... what? Just check Twitter numbers in any nation, and compare them to the number of people who are able to vote in that country.
"Twitter" exists and serves people in the United States in the political class, entertainment, sports, any and all areas where bombastic communication has always existed anyway, now they can amp it up even more.
MOST of us probably do not use it or care what is on it. Something people like Mr. Warzel might someday figure out. It is YOUR world Charlie, not mine and nobody I personally know.
I made the decision the minute they tried to sell it to me-it is demeaning and frankly horrid.
I exaggerate for the sake of argument--I'm sure millions of everyday Americans use it. Pity for them, and I mean it. They are learning nothing about the human race, real or not.
Twitter is nothing but "Establishment pundits and politicos" and elites. And racist jerks.
2
Twitter is like high school. The people with a large following—the popular kids, the jocks—respond only to others with a similar-size following. The ugly kids and the outcasts—those with a meager following—are ignored even if they have something to say, or they do their best to suck up to the popular kids so they can eat at their lunch table. But, more seriously, I disagree that Twitter elites don’t think it’s real life. In fact, to “activists,” or those outraged by Trump, the Twittersphere is the electronic version of the March on Washington. It gives them the impression they’re doing something for social justice. But what’s it really done is just served as a big echo chamber for like-minded people, and taken the people out of the march.
Of Twitter, Mr. Warzel writes, "Donald Trump’s use of the platform for campaigning and governing and acting as assignment editor to the media is the sterling example."
Please. Clearly it's "the fecal example."
1
Twitter is just one more example of the multitude of digital systems all straining and keening at you day in and day out. From the moment you wake until you sleep;
"Here! Here! Over HERE! Come listen to MEEEEEE!!?! Ping PING, you have a MESSAGE! I can satisfy your NEEEEED!"
Attention gets diverted, fragmented in a hundred different ways. This is what the 'Net, and the digerati contained therein, has done to all of us. We become distracted, befuddled, confused, disgusted, revolted and pleased all from moment to moment. Sometimes even at the same time.
And then it feeds back on itself, a loop between the social media platform and the user of it. Is it any wonder it becomes the buzzing cacophony that it is? It's a digital narcotic.
A semi-mindless enthralling bit of nothing that consumes more of your time than you truly should be offering to it; just to keep you equally mindlessly enthralled and stupified (is that a word?).
All social media is becoming a reflection of that which it continually seduces and entices everyone to use; You. A fragmented, distracted mess.
My gawd folks, turning it off...turn it all off, before it sucks the life clean out of you. As I said above it's a drug, a digital narcotic. It should come with a black warning label on the side of every device you use to consume it.
John~
American Net'Zen
3
Yes, Twitter is real life. So is bird poop.
2
Its true that Twitter isn’t real life, its also true that it dominates daily newsfeeds. The current president of the United States governs by tweet and makes the rest of us crazy in the process. What after all is “real life” and how much influence is it having these days. The hyper-partisan political climate isn’t going away anytime soon nor is peace gonna break out in our time. The democrats and older media don’t get it, for the republicans and Trump politics is war and Twitter is one of the battlegrounds. You fight the enemy where he is not where you want him to be. We didn’t make this a zero sum game the republicans did and the democrats better wake up to that “reality” really soon. Twitter is just one more place in a wide ranging national / international “conversation”, its best not to cede it to Trump and his friends the Russian trolls just because you feel above the grittiness and often ugliness of it all. Time to engage, full speed ahead.
13
Twitter is a complete and utter waste of time and resources. I like being elite, it is a good thing.
2
Twitter is not real life. But it is a real slice of real life.
Twitter isn’t real life.
Twitter is 10x meaner.
No one in real life acts the way they do on Twitter.
Twitter is a hotbed of hyper extremism. It's emblematic of what's wrong in the primary process: toxic fringe opinions are elevated by the algorithm.
You mention that Biden is 'flailing'...based on the results of 2 negligent primaries. Bloomberg is on Sanders heels without even participating, and Twitter has nothing to do with that.
General election voters don't look at Twitter.
Twitter, like nearly all social media platforms. is most surely NOT "real life". Rather, it's a way for people to hide behind computers and express whatever opinion they want to with little to no ramifications for saying what they do, not to mention the prevalence of people who only use these sites to TROLL. Real life is standing in front of a group and debating your views, not posting online.
The vast majority of people, including me, are not on Twitter. So Twitter cannot be considered teal life for the majority of Americans.
I have never used Twitter and never will. It is helping destroy our country.
Twitter, however flawed, does seem to affect people, especially when the vulgar bully in-chief, with his constant self-aggrandizement, and persistent lying, seems to cause addiction in a 'base' that is confused and biased, believing the constant bombardment of twisted truths represents the 'gospel truth'; this, plus Trump's demagoguery trapping folks' emotional feelings, seems enough to feed a cult of personality. Too bad that Twitter has become unethical, allowing all sorts of fraud to be committed...with political impunity. In that sense, Twitter has acquired a life of it's own...to our despair.
All the tweeters of Trump will stop on the night of Nov 3, 2020, if cannot win paving the way for Mike Pence to be sworn in af 46th following morning to pardon Donald Trump, Winner of the 2020 Election will be sworn in on January 20, 2021. Life goes on. We will not hear from Trump. Trump will be in dustbin of history.
If Twitter is real life, then it must have some useful predictive power, especially in politics. I have yet to see it, as Twitter is like your loud, obnoxious uncle whose uninformed opinions rarely persuade anyone. I suppose that Twitter has been useful to President Trump, in the same way that chum is useful in getting sharks to gather round. Trump drops something on Twitter, and journalists lose their minds trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to take it apart and convince us of their superiority.
Some of us who utterly despise Twitter don’t hold it in contempt because we don’t think it’s real. We find it’s use cowardly and a market for insecurity and immaturity.
Is it real? You bet. Is it a valid representation of reality? Of course not! It's called bias, and it's mostly spurious information. Believe in those patterns at your own peril!
The fact that Twitter is the means by which Trump disseminates his daily screed of vitriol and lies without so much as a check or time out for violating very clear standards of conduct as published by Twitter itself, was enough of a double standard for me to simply close my account and tune it out.
Like Facebook, which I likewise abandoned after 2016, I haven’t missed Twitter once and I daresay my blood pressure is the better for it. I know my mental well being is.
1
To paraphrase George M. Cohan: 'My father thanks you, my mother thanks you, my sister thanks you and Twitter thanks you." For that matter, Mark Zuckerberg thanks you.
Social media is only as real as you make it. How real is it really? How much of what is posted is the truth, or a lie, or an exaggeration, hyperbole a mistake? How do you verify all this? Only that portion is the truth. Twitter and all social media is only as important as you chose to make it. Real life existed before this and will continue to do so afterwards.
7
Bernie Bros skew results. Twitter is *not* America.
I'm on Twitter all the time and can assure you you are wrong.
2
Stop throwing around the word "elites" - it has become a nothing word/nonsense insult, the meaning of which bends to whatever a writer wants it to. Here, it also means nothing.
People behave differently on social media, where they largely write under anonymous handles, than they do in face to face interactions, where we all have to weigh in-person, real time reactions from others. These two issues alone make it very different than real life.
And that's not elitism, that's science.
The more we accept twitter as real life, the more frightened I really get.
Twitter is real life. Millions offering instant opinions based on almost no knowledge or experience.
Worse, since they BELIEVE it is true, then it is true, forever
Welcome to the Dark Ages!
Interesting observations. Boils down to "Twits have more influence than their numbers suggest." Which has always been true of the politically hyperactive minisculity. Most people ignore politics between elections.
The media (whether "mainstream" or "alt") are also politically hyperactive, and report on the tweets, etc. Thus they amplify the effects of the social platforms, and this in turn influences the vote. Peopl like to be on the winning team.
Thought experiment: the media report on the horticulturally hyperactive. America would become an arena of competing theories of garden design. The pro-marrow faction would sneer at the pro-broccolites. City councillors would rise or fall depending on their support for formal or informal gardens. The rosiers would ignore the dahlians...
Well, it would less harmful than political religiosities.
Twitter is not my life. Or the life of anyone I know or have even heard of, frankly, outside of people required to use it for job.
Twitter can't be real life.
I'm not on it ... neither are my family and friends. In fact, I don't know any one who uses it.
But, if it makes you feel better -- go for it.
Just don't tell me it's "real life."
That is why we need to bring back dueling. At least when you attacked someone's character in the 18th century, you had to be willing to put your life on the line. That caused people to think before they wrote something. By comparison, Twitter is for cowards. I doubt DJT would be issuing tweets at 3:00 AM if he had to literally defend himself. I suspect he would use the bone spurs defense.
Sorry but I'm not an "elite" and I tell you Twitter is no more real life than any of a thousand reality TV shows (but it is just as obnoxious). I don't use it, no one I know uses it and when it lies at the bottom of the barrel with AOL, Craigslist and every other soon to be dead media widget, Real Life will move on just fine without it.
All I have to say about this is, the last time I checked my history books, our country was founded by "elites."
It takes no effort to tweet. None. It means nothing. It’s the very definition of ephemeral.
Twitter is junior high school for lemmings.
Piling-on and bandwagon-jumping leads predictably to cancel culture. Rinse and repeat.
Face it: Twitter is crude but quaint, and so very 2015.
Interesting, thought-provoking, thank you.
After the unreality of the Democratic debates, it's clear that all further issues should be addressed via Twitter.
Twitter isn't representative of the voting population. Just it´s a spot with several discussions that going to disappear on seconds. The real changes happen in our houses, on the streets, at the school, on our families, on the tables...
Twitter is a very dangerous medium.
We find ourselves where we are, in large part, because of twitter.
In the hands of Trump, it is akin to A-bomb.
Twitter is a joke.
It's for people who feel marginalized and this makes them feel like they have the ability to speak up and gives them hope that someone is listening. Especially when, so called, celebrities are saying stuff.
More people spend there time on Twitter and other social media than they do talking to their own families.
1
Politically, real life may be what happens in lobbyists' offices when they write legislation and in legislators' offices when the bills are delivered. This is not Twitter, nor does Twitter have much influence on it.
Twitter is useful for a certain 3 a.m. user in Washington who can't spell, can't type, and can't think straight. It's the equivalent of standing on a box in Hyde Park, ranting to anyone who passes by. You get an occasional jeer or a cheer from the audience, but it's an empty adrenaline rush. Your thoughts only influence people who can't think for themselves.
1
Twitter appeals to millions and millions of people because it is the lowest common denominator of information and opinion exchange.
For an increasingly dumbed-down population, it lets people with simplistic views and opinion voice them without having to think beyond the arbitrary character limit. That is real life in all its unsubtle and barely nuanced glory.
Just think how few Twitter messages there would be if instead of a maximum number of characters for each Tweet, there was instead, a minimum.
2
I wrote a book back in 2000, a science fiction literary sort of a thing, where a class of people called “Technophiles” lined up in booths with IVs and VR masks and had no idea what reality was about. Wall-E, later, described such people using some cheap techniques as vacation. Plenty of other writers have warned us about such. Virtual reality is not reality. People who make realistic decisions based on virtual reality are killing our humanity.
The Times actually seems committed to publishing a diversity of letters supporting a few candidates, Sanders and Warren disproportionately. As for Warzel, I feel badly that he really does think Twitter is real life, but it still requires exponentially more than 280 characters to capture reality.
3
Twitter epitomizes the devolving state of public discourse and rise of tribal incivility over reasoned debate and discussion. By limiting the number of words it encourages snarky, exaggerated statements designed to attract attention. I agree that Twitter is certainly part of "real life," but not one to be celebrated.
Regarding Bernie's "front runner" status, if you add the vote totals for the so-called moderates--Amy, Pete, and Joe--they clearly surpass Sanders. The problem is the moderates are competing with each other and dividing the vote. The Times' analysis of voters is convincing and should ring warning bells about a Sanders nomination. This is where the Twitter crowd fails to understand the larger reality of public opinion, beyond their echo chambers.
5
Do you also believe that the poll predicting Alfred Landon would win the presidency in 1936 wasn't really wrong? Twitter is not representative and the perception that it is leads people to believe that their opinions are more mainstream and more politically viable than they actually are.
3
There's a difference as well between Twitter users (22% of Americans) and Facebook users (70% of Americans). Twitter tends to attract celebrities, politicians and journalists. Facebook is a broader stratum of the population. That's why Facebook can be corrupted to attract the votes of non-tech savvy adults, many of whom don't even know how to use the platform's nuts and bolts. Twitter users aren't likely to fall for fake ads. (Facebook is the one social media company allowing political ads.) That's another reason why Facebook has to get new ownership and management.
2
@David As someone who is active on both platforms, I could not disagree more. Facebook succumbs more to confirmation bias as users interact primarily with their own “friends,” people with whom they already agree. It’s like a quilting bee. Twitter, on the other hand, is a more open sharing of ideas and viewpoints with a vast array of people, most of whom use anonymous handles. It is also much more influential as a result. And stop with the “change of ownership” at Facebook. I could not think of anything more bone-chilling than trying to take away a man’s company because you don’t like his ad policies.
As the saying goes. If you think something is for free - its probably because someone is making something off you. Twitter, Facebbook et. al. are merely after selling your information. You are the product.
Politicians clearly see Twitter as probably the best and often the only way to communicate with a certain type of person.
The people that I see and know who use Twitter are generally people who live by soundbites and do not read widely or often enough to educate themselves on any given topic. Oh, am I sounding elitist ?- sorry.
Twitter is a quick and easy way to get talking points and avoid effort of becoming truly aware and informed.
Other than politicians who want votes, I honestly do not know of any intelligent people who use Twitter. Its like people that like use like, "Like, " like, a lot. To them, it's like free. To me it's worthless.
Whilst I do believe that Trump probably uses Twitter a lot, I think most high profile celebrity Twitter feeds are just fed by PR agents looking to keep steady contact with "fans" Another way to make money from your fans.
3
Twitter is no more 'real life' than a TV reality show, or a cocktail party of UWS Manhattan liberals. It is, for lack of a better associative, Show Business---a collective of busybodies who esteem their self-worth and thus their opinions to be of extra-specialness over that of their fellow citizenry.
Twitter can be divided into two basic groups: Those who are famous and those who esteem themselves to be, and the acolytes who 'follow' them. In this way it is very much like the relationship between rock star and groupie, the powerful and the sycophant.
Believe it or not, most Americans...just live. We're out there working hard, heads low, trying to live upstanding lives of integrity and time-honored decency. We are not self-obsessed. We are not self-promoters. We are not trying to service our 'brand'.
And consider yourselves entirely free to self-delude about whether you're 'elite' or not, when the very real non-elites show up on election day.
6
I prefer the life I have chosen, which to date has never included Twitter.
5
Well, this seems about as opposite it comes. Maybe it's projection? Most of the people on Twitter are elites, and they see their echo chambers and think it's real life. The rest of us look on in horror as perfectly normal people get "canceled" over nothing. That's not real life. That's just the elites pretending it is.
2
The weaponization of language in suggesting the idea that “Twitter is not real” is an impressive move by the tv media to keep their business. To discredit a competitor. That is all. It’s business.
1
“The Sanders movement has been criticized for its intensity on Twitter, which infrequently but occasionally veers into toxic territory.”
I call shenanigans on this statement. It is neither infrequent nor occasional. The most virulent Sanders supporters, the Bernie Bros, are on it 24/7. I’ve had to block any mention of his name on Twitter because it is so bad and so constant.
I supported Bernie in 2016. Voted for him in my state primary. But I cannot support him this year, due in large part to not wanting to be lumped in with those knuckleheads. They are bad for Bernie and bad for politics in general. We don’t need these deplorables on our side.
6
Social media promotes “politics as hobby.” The number of self-important tweeters who think they’re really accomplishing great things while on Twitter is just sad. And this includes journalists who spend too much time on Twitter and too little time on the intensive work real journalism requires. The Fourth Estate has not improved in the Time of Twitter.
2
Twitter is NOT real life.
Neither are NYT comments, for that matter.
Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that real life consists of real people exchanging thoughtful, emotional interactions with other real people.
That’s what being human is really about.
So does that imply that Trump is not a real human?
Well, he certainly is not a normal human!
2
I believe that Twitter is more of a “concentrate” like frozen orange juice. Others have cited the demographic numbers, especially that it’s 22 percent of the adult population, skews male, etc. Once Twitter is diluted into the rest of the population, it is a lot less predictive. Like yard signs. True believers have signs on their yards or in their windows. Not every voter does. A street covered in yard signs for a particular candidate makes everyone think, “well, X is going to win!” When that doesn’t happen, well...who’s to blame?
I am interested in Charlie’s comments about Trump being the “assignment editor” and that’s very true. It would have been my hope that responsible news organizations would have just stopped reporting on his tweets, depriving them of oxygen, but no. I worry that this is the new template, regardless of who’s elected this time or ever again. “Going over the heads of the media” used to mean a rally. Tweeting is much cheaper.
Twitter, like Instagram (more than Facebook) demands constant content. It’s relentless. That means that heavy Twitter users with a high number of followers have to have a “hot take” many times a day. Then it’s retweeted or shared, making it look like “wow this is really trending” when it’s actually meaningless to most Americans, but meaningful to the media that also needs constant content. The great circle.
Twitter is an aspect of real life I choose to avoid, primarily due to the shallowness of the thinking displayed there. What it does is give all of those individuals who lack the skillset to promote their beliefs irl an opportunity to shout them from the proverbial rooftop, and in so doing, find out they're not alone in holding those beliefs. Twitter is a mobocracy. And it's commonly accepted that the intellectual heft of a mob will tend towards the intellectual heft of its least intellectually hefty person. My, what a euphemistic sentence. Which explains why I want nothing to do with it.
Real life or not, Twitter doesn’t matter to most Americans. Most people don’t obsessively read political content day in and day out. Biden was in front because the media said he was. Bernie is now in front because the media says he is. Next up-Bloomberg!
1
Not having a cell phone, I can certainly say Twitter does not have to be part of my life. I wish it were also not part of one particular Orange Person‘s life either.
3
The uncritical use of the term "elite" here is troublesome. In 2016, 66 million Democratic voters were dismissed by the New York Times and other media outlets as "elites," while a significantly smaller number, 63 million Republican voters, were lauded as real/heartland/working/flyover country Americans.
New York Times columnists may indeed be "elites" in terms of income and influence. But the real elites wielding outsize influence are business owners, executives, bankers, and others -- overwhelmingly white, male, wealthy, and Christian -- who form the base of the Republican party.
Twitter users tend to be more white, more male, and more wealthy than the mean. But they do not compare in their power to the white Christian business owners and executives who, more or less, run the country.
I dunno, I think Twitter is a bit too self-curated to be much like "real life." Like, literally the point of Twitter is to create your own bubble, which granted, people do in meatspace too, but not to the same extent.
One of the more interesting things about Twitter is the light it shines on the news media and prominent journalists. Whether on the right or left, prominent journalists can be very cliquish - almost like a high school - and self-satisfied about being part of the 'in' crowd. Most revealingly, however, is how a lot of prominent journalists tend to form and perpetuate narratives that eventually seep into other media.
Twitter is probably similar to the massive cacophony of voices in Grand Central Station at rush hour is. Is it "real"? Yes. Does it actually have any meaning? No, not really.
I've never been on Twitter (or Facepalm, or Instaidiot). The vast majority of Americans aren't on Twitter. And the majority of those that are aren't on it continually every day.
Those who believe in its importance are mostly those to whom it is important. Old story: Abe Lincoln was once taken to a medium/spiritualist. He was asked what he thought about it. He said something like "Well, I suppose you would have liked it if you were the sort of person that liked that sort of thing".
No actual human thought (conceived of by anyone over the age of five) can be expressed in 280 characters - unless one is a poet, or a Hemingway.
The vast majority of my family, friends, and business associates are not on Twitter. Don't care about Twitter. The few I know that have Twitter accounts just sort of look at it on weekends when they have nothing better to do.
Twitter is not real life.
1
I think Twitter creates the illusion of activism, it's most dangerous feature. Today's government should have the streets of DC filled every day in protest. Instead, we get tweets of outrage and waiting in the wings for other people to act in the real world.
3
The notion "twitter is real life" must almost appear tautological to a Times reporter living, and breathing, in representations of reality, but to the rest of us denizens in Flyover Land, relegated to mundane tasks like starting cars in frigid mornings and then to staying away from potholes and tailgaters on our way to work, wondering whether I'm confused by the authenticity of 280 characters on a 3 inch screen is a luxury I am currently unable to afford.
4
Whether Twitter does or doesn’t reflect “real life,” whatever that means, i’d irrelevant to me. I’m not at all interested in tweeting my views and opinions to people I don’t know. I use it as a resource for my own life and it works just fine for my needs: bfollowing and reading writers, journalists, performers, artists and thinkers who interest me, catching up with articles and news from here and abroad I might otherwise miss, and quickly communicating with friends here & abroad via DMs. Plus it’s often the best place to just be made aware that something just happened, near or far, before any other medium has any information out there about it. It’s not difficult to avoid or ignore all the noise and vile stuff on it if you’re judicious about how you use it. It has zero effect on my political views or voting behavior.
I’ve considered using Twitter for one reason only—to follow my favorite comedians. While the format limits most forms of communication, it is perfect for jokes.
1
My biggest issue with twitter (aside from the negativity, trolls, and feedback loopish-ness) is that so much of the media seems to spend all their time there and then assume that what is being discussed or trending on twitter is all that is going on in the real world. And whether it’s laziness or a lack of imagination, much of the media don’t seem to look much beyond its very limited confines.
Twitter is not real life. I left several months ago and my real life continues ...
8
You use Sanders' front-runner status as evidence that Twitter is in fact real life, that online enthusiasm equals performance at the polls. But Sanders is doing so well only by virtue of the fact that his opposition is fractured. In NH, Warren and Sanders received a combined total of 35% who could be said to favor "revolution." But Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Biden, Steyer, Gabbard, Patrick, Bennet and Yang combined received 63% of voters who preferred a more inclusive, less ideologically strident and polarizing approach. The Sanders people make the most noise, both online and on the ground, even crashing the events of other candidates and seizing the microphone. But they do not represent the REAL will of the people. Noise is not the same as substance or truth.
5
Twitter isn't real life, but it is addictive.
5
One way to think of it might be that there are different groups of voters. There are some voters that you will only reach by going door-to-door, for instance. That would have to be face-to-face.
Since people rarely answer their phones anymore unless they know the caller, that's not a good way to gauge public opinion or to reach people, either. I often wonder who is being reached when there is a phone bank. Someone, obviously, because all the campaigns seem to be using them.
Mayor Pete did well by going into rural areas in Iowa. It's likely many of those voters couldn't be reached on Twitter, either. But a lot of them would belong to various groups or organizations, like churches or clubs. Churches and clubs for urban areas as well.
As you point out, there is definitely a real life group of people on Twitter. It may play an outsize role in the media, because it's pretty easy to reach. It includes lots of drama! Part of the point is to get recognized to stand out amongst the many other citizens of Twitter. Often, a younger group associated with it. But then there are the Trump voters on Twitter. Not all are young.
How to reach people and what the groups are seems to have changed, a lot of unknowns. Interesting phenomena.
1
Is it possible for us all to just admit that no one knows anything about anybody anymore?
It is clear that unfathomable amount of data that is collected every moment of everyday has failed to bring us clarity. Rather, competing data sets, each with their own self-appointed experts, have only served to increasingly confound, obscure, and perplex the public, the markets, and the political class.
In the past, we thought it reasonable, even responsible, to consult our favorite pundits' reading of the day's political tea leaves (polls, surveys, economic indicators, etc.).
But now with Twitter and other myriad data sources, the profession of punditry, appearing woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to engage with our data saturated reality, doles out quaint (if not trite) prognostications that inevitably fail to be sufficiently convincing.
Thus, our political polls too frequently lack predictive efficacy (who knew! what a surprise!). Does the twitter-verse ever diverge from (or does it ever actually intersect with) our universe?
2
One point of consideration: I have voted in almost every election for the last 32 years, but I have never tweeted once, and have barely ever ventured onto Twitter or any other social media platform, for political or any other kind of information. There are far more reliable sources that are just as easily available, so why would I waste my time on the bombastic opinions of people who are probably less qualified than me to form and express them? Twitter might be real life for one very vocal, self-absorbed segment of the population, but I think that view is skewed—just as Twitter itself is.
6
Supposedly about 20% of tweets are by bots which makes it someone different then what is taken for real life since it may not be clear whether one is communicating with a human or a computer. Like all social media Twitter moves people to the extremes since it favors emotional content over complex ideas. The modern world is actually ridiculously complex and Twitter is not a good platform for reflecting that. Fortunately people still write books so complex and well thought out idea are still being presented and are influential while emotional ranting takes place on Twitter. But it looks like democracy in the US is collapsing much faster than the ideas presented in books can circulate.
1
Twitter is two thirds male, and only used by about 22% of the population. It is used mostly by young people -- aka the demographic least likely to actually show up and vote -- and is also predominantly wealthy, college-educated millennials, which means it actually represents the Future Elite more than any other group of Americans.
4
Twitter might be "real life" for the people who've got time in their day to get up and angry-tweet at each other. It is not real life for moderates who won't go on there and angry-tweet every opinion and thought. We'll simply go make our thoughts known in the voting booth.
5
The influence of Twitter is real, but it's certainly not benign.
If this comment was a Tweet, I'd be close to the character limit already. And how much substance does this comment really have? See, there's the problem.
1
A great article in the Atlantic on the Democratic elites vs regular voters ie tweeters vs nontweeters.
Sanders has a 71% favorability rating among regular voters--the highest among his competitors. His unfavorable rating is 19%--tied for 2nd lowest.
98% of Warren supporters, 97% of Buttigieg supporters, and 92% of Biden supporters said they'd support him against Trump.
But Sanders ranks 4th in endorsements by party officials. Regular voters don't have hostility towards him but party leaders do. They like Bloomberg.
So does the media--which tends to go along with the party leaders. The Times had 8 stories on Bloomberg on their political page the other day.
Want to see the Democratic party blow up? A convention where Sanders has the most delegates, but not enough for a clear win, that's thrown to Bloomberg will do it.
And that's twitter vs real life.
4
After studying and writing about social media, it's clear that only certain personality types engage with it (as adults--teens and young adults do so in greater numbers. And people in journalism and politics must be on it for their jobs). How can we say it's real life when the many people who do not follow social media aren't represented? Social media is strange, and it isn't necessary in living a modern and informed life. Mostly it suggests a self-absorption that isn't present in all people, part entertainment and part navel-gazing.
Of course it's not real life. I think a lot of journalists get involved with it because it's important to their jobs. It reminds me of the switch to announcing movies' earnings a couple of decades past. Don't you realize a good proportion of people don't care?
3
I am not an "elite" and Twitter has nothing to do with my life, or the lives of anybody I Know. Can't get more unreal than that, for me. For others, yeah, it may even be the center of their lives. The nuance in Twitter is not real life is that it, like everything else in a diverse society and world, is a minority position and we need to be careful not to make too much of it. According to the company 22% of American adults use Twitter. Of those users, less than half of them are on the platform daily (42%). Significant, sure, but 78% are doing something else.
5
Sure, twitter may be real life. It may be representational of who we are as a people. That doesn't make up for the fact that Twitter is quite possibly the worst invention of the contemporary world.
Twitter is essentially just one big angry mob. There's so much to be upset about in this world — whether your a democrat or a republican, or for completely apolitical reasons — yet fuming this anger only augments it.
On Twitter, everybody thinks that they're right, and that everybody else is wrong. This is, of course, simply not the case.
But in today's world, we are all told to treat everybody as if we all deserve a voice. As if we all deserve to tell seven and a half billion people what's on our mind. But, the fact of the matter is that we were all happier before we became hyper aware of each others' political beliefs.
Twitter divides us.
Yet some individual tweets, in just a few hundred characters, attempt to tell the whole story. Sentences are short. Dramatic. Powerful. Yet they don't represent reality. Because there are infinite sides to an issue.
It's such an amazing phenomenon that half of the country always thinks that they're right and the other is wrong.
5
I'm pretty sure I'm not an elite, but I agree that Twitter is not real life. I think about 20% of the country use it, and they skew young. I never get my news from Twitter, and I'm skeptical of news coming out of twitter. I do think that among those 20%, there are quite a few who are twitter-centric and believe that twitter is leading the conversation, but more often I see it as following.
7
You lost me at "elites". Can't you guys come up with your own words, instead of using the same meaningless groupthink terms? Twitter may have its uses, and like all things internet, has pros and cons. But for me, it was a toxic cesspool of misinformation and mind-rot that made me angry and anxious. I quit it long ago. I have also cut down on FB and IG, and I'm much happier and actually engaging in "real life" a lot more. Social media is a fun quick fix and highly addictive, but it's not helping us think more deeply, or listen to each other, or help each other in any true, substantive way. It also isn't helping us think for ourselves or engage in original thought, or write better. If it did, we would not all be falling back on lazy terms like "elites".
19
I am on Twitter and FB and Instagram. However, no matter how many likes I garner, when I vote I am still a single individual. My vote is worth no more - and no less - than the vote of a MAGA warrior, or a Bernie bro, or a digitally illiterate farmer in Wisconsin. ‘Enthusiasm” counts for nothing in the voting booth. Numbers do. And the number of people who are frightened by socialism is greater than the number of people who want a revolution now. Twitter can actually be helpful in mobilizing the moderate majority. The more we learn about the behavior of Bernie’s supporters online, the less we will be inclined to let them export their toxic intolerance into real life. The digital KGB is bad enough; we don’t need the real thing.
1
Serial Tweeters have too much time on their hands IMO. It’s extraordinary. How do they hold down jobs, study for exams, raise children, clean house, shop for and prepare food, exercise? I’m truly boggled.
10
Twitter isn’t real life. But real life is becoming more and more like Twitter.
10
My problem with Twitter is that I doubt the sincerity of the tweets. Some seem to just be trying to stir things up while other tweets seem to be just parroting whatever is popular to tweet. I doubt that insincerity adds up to a real life.
6
I guess I'm not really living then. I don't use Twitter at all. Therefore I must not exist in the real world.
29
@Steve Good point. Descartes in the 21st Century: "I tweet, therefore I am!" ("Tweeto, ergo sum.) Actually, I don't tweet and I think I'll give up commenting in the NYT. Methinks it was better when it was just paper and a person couldn't be sucked into a comments section for days on end. But I enjoy reading the posts of thinking, literate people found here. You made me laugh and that's worth the subscription fee.
@Steve Me neither Twitter is for Twits "a silly or foolish person."
1
Do we pay attention to twitter because twitter matters? Or does twitter matter because we pay attention?
Very chicken and the egg. I've often wondered how many people only use twitter as a professional software tool. They neither know nor care about the posts they are reading and writing. They just know twitter is part of the job. Democracy forgotten. The little blue bird is paying the bills.
Charlie Warzel can collect a paycheck this week because he wrote a column on whether twitter matters or not. The journalistic bravery is non-existent.
3
Not on Twitter or Facebook and my life is fine. The media is more obsessed with Twitter than the average person. But of course, someone who makes his living directly or indirectly from Twitter would have a stake in it.
7
Whether Twitter is "real life" is a meaningless question. Twitter posts are, however, without a doubt, not statistically representative of a broader population. As a result, extrapolating conclusions from Twitter samples has no meaning apart from the opinions of Twitter users. That has nothing to do with the "elites" that Warzel repeatedly attacks and is just a matter of science.
15
Twitter is perfect for the ritalin charged attention deficit suffering younger generations. Madison Avenue got it right over seventy years ago - there's no more potent word in the vocabulary than 'New' and Twitter is perpetually new by its very definition.
7
I think one of the traditional roles of these pundits is to act as a false mirror for the American public. Their strategy is convince every American that they shouldn't vote based on their own beliefs, but rather on a distorted view of what everyone else believes, a view that is carefully constructed by the media.
Twitter and other social media platforms make this more difficult for them, which is why they disparage it constantly.
5
I hate how the casually the word “elite” is thrown around today. It seems like there are populists on both sides of the political spectrum who believe that anyone who thinks differently can be labeled an “elite” who is motivated by greed and a desire to stick it to the common people. I’m not rich and I’m not greedy. I have no desire to stick around to the common people. I just have no faith in the wisdom of crowds. I do have faith in the madness of mobs. That is why I am not a populist and why things like social media popularity mean nothing to me.
33
@Ben
Thank you! I just made a similar post about the use of the term "elite", albeit it much more sarcastically. I am sick of these meaningless groupthink terms that are not only inaccurate, but dismissive of nuanced viewpoints. And isn't it interesting that both sides often use the same terms?
7
@aj: I have nothing to add, but I appreciate the feedback.
1
I have reread my post many times. Although I immediately recognized the misuse of the word “around,” I literally didn’t recognize the extra word “the” in the first sentence until now. It’s like an optical illusion. Or, more likely, a perceptual deficiency that many of us have. Have you seen “Paris is beautiful in the the spring time” arranged as a triangle? It is almost impossible to see the second “the” without carefully dissecting it.
Bernie being the front runner right now has more to do with a collapse of the Biden and Warren's campaigns than people's opinion on democratic socialism. In all reality, a centrist will probably get the nomination if a few centrists drop out. In Nevada currently, Bernie (28.8%) and Warren (11.8%) make up all of the most left bloc of votes at 40.6% the other nearly 60% of votes are for centrists they are just divided between many candidates. So I don't agree that Bernie's ascent confirms all of the author's theories about Twitter and real life aligning. This is just the most opportune time to make that assertion.
5
@Dan They have head to head matchup polls with all the moderate candidates who would supposedly pick up all the moderate votes. They lose every single time. In some cases by quite a large margin. Adding up sanders and warren votes are not how politics work
1
Yeah, no. I’m a techie and still most of the people around me don’t even know how to use Twitter. It’s a sub culture, and a significant social media dialogue, but it’s hardly ‘real life’.
10
Twitter actually represents real life all right. If real life is meant to represent a very shallow depth of understanding of the issues that face the country.
I do indeed believe that way over 50% of the voters have an understanding of issues that doesn't reach all the way out to 240 characters, the length of a Tweet.
The economy? primarily "the stock market is going up" and "unemployment is remarkably low" and "all the credit goes to Donald Trump."
Read the columns of a real economist -- not Donald Trump -- and they'll fill in the blanks. The stock market can drop like a brick and it will within a few years; it is currently buoyed by massive borrowing, not new jobs. Unemployment is down but wage increases are barely matching inflation meaning that those are not well paid jobs that are being created. Manufacturing is in a recession! No one is predicting an overall recession, but look back to 2008 and look at the empty list of economists that predicted the biggest recession except the Great Depression. An economic bubble buoyed by borrowing and consumer confidence and not new well paid jobs is unsustainable.
But that explanation is far too extensive for a large majority of Americans. The short -- Trump version -- of the economy will do just fine. Twitter accurately represents American voter's opinions, and thus is "real". Those opinions just aren't based on reality.
5
A quick internet data search -- and without a doubt my current "real life" experience of teaching and parenting college-age students -- shows that the majority of this demographic does not use Twitter, especially in a political context.
6
"Twitter is a real-world platform and is used by very real humans." Until it's not. And that is the very, very large, unspoken problem here - that Twitter is not uniquely populated by rational, of voting age, real human Americans. It's a morass of phony accounts, bots, trolls (Russian and otherwise), non-voters, people from other countries. Twitter is Twitter. It's not always a bad thing, but that means a majority on Twitter does not make it a majority of anything but other Twitter users. And using it to try to gauge real, human, American, voting age public opinion is a bad idea.
9
Twitter is verbal bombast. It is not thought. Most people don't have time for thought. So, they take to twitter, or reading someone else's tweets. But are Tweeters, whom we associate with non-thinkers, really that different from we NYT commentators, who engage intellectually in "thought" arguments, but in the end are also passionately promoting our own ideal vision of how the world should be, namely liberal, democratic, pluralistic, cooperative, inclusive, "we're all in this together" proclamations. Is ours just a different kind of bombast? Could be. I hope we win out.
3
One of the beautiful things about the Opinion page is you can recognize that there are solid points in favor of an opinion with which you disagree and just dismiss them without having to address them. It also means you don't have to formulate arguments of your own as long as you preface your assertions with "I'd argue."
I think the thing you're missing is that something that is not "real life" can still have real life consequences. Video games aren't real life either, but you can play them to the point where you lose your job.
4
A substantial part of us understands that too often, especially as it's used by Trump, Twitter is nothing other than a copout to express complex ideas that require thoughtful dissemination in under 280 characters. When people resort to Twitter in such ways, It's usually because they don't care enough to give important issues the examination they need or, for one reason or another, the user is incapable of sustaining a meaningful discourse on the topic. Either way, Twitter is useful for setting times and venues for get-togethers, but for serious discourse, it is worth very little.
3
Twitter is neither necessary or sufficient for a "real life." It may be that many people feel some sense of connection via the platform, and that can be argued ad infinitum. People can certainly be whipped into a rage or stage shows of adulation via the platform.
How many of these voices really enhance the political conversation? We cannot know, being stuck in the moment. Maybe some future historians will have a better feel for the good and bad. It is almost impossible to have a learned conversation via Twitter (maybe one can get a bit closer with the expanded posts)--that may be part of its appeal for a lot of people. Again, difficult to know.
Twitter is good at reflecting impulses but that also minimizes its value for solving social problems.
5
Even though I am not on Twitter, I agree, especially with respect to young people who use social media as a daily communication tool for expressing what’s important to them in both their online and offline life.
2
Ok... so Twitter is real life.
Which Twitter? Which Tweet?
The dialogue on Twitter is as diverse as anywhere - the platform highlights the most enthusiastic Trumpians and Bernistas. Those people are real, and they are likely the bases that will drive our election politics. So of course Twitter is real life, and of course it is representative - but of what, exactly?
The old idea of the Silent Majority - the people not on Twitter or ranting aloud - has been joined with a newer idea of the Reticent Majority. They are not saying what they think, on Twitter or anywhere else because the environment is too toxic, and at the very least misdirecting the pollsters on how they will vote. They are as real life as the Twits Tweeting.
The argument comes down to who do you believe represents the voter - the noisy folk expressing away, or the quiet folks hiding their thoughts from the great media circus?
Both are real life - and thinking only one represents our reality is short sighted.
8
@Cathy
Beautifully put, and sadly, true. I don't express my views anywhere anymore, for fear that I'll get beat up online and in real life. I think there are a lot of us out here, living in between the two poles of left and right. That doesn't make us"centrists" necessarily. We're just not buying into shallow platitudes and unrealistic policies. A lot of us are retreating into silence, and waiting to make our voices heard through our votes.
Twitter IS NOT real life. I am 60+ YO and in my cohort, hardly anyone I know uses Twitter. It isn't as if I couldn't get on Twitter if I wanted. I have a background in technology, use RSS feeds daily, post comments on various internet forums and even build my own computers.
I just don't see any real value in Twitter nor people who use it.
11
I don't really care to engage on the substance of this article. But I did notice the photo. Before I scrolled down a bit I thought this was going to be a more Trump focused article and the people pictured were his supporters.
But something seemed off. These people in the photo didn't have the same vacant yet also hateful glee in their eyes that one usually sees among Trump rally attendees.
I kept scrolling and saw it was of people meeting Bernie.
Some days, moreso lately, I equate Bernie supporters with Trump supporters. Thanks for the reminder that they are not the same.
3
Same coin, different sides.
1
@Sarah
If you notice, there's not a single African American in this crowd. I can see how you would mistake it for a Trump rally.
Twitter is the guy at the end of the bar pontificating. Real discourse requires much more thought and commitment.
11
I agree with the posit that Twitter is more effective than those with a stake in making it a little brother or sister to the establishment media.
At least up until the latest improvements that have reduced the feeling of feedback that was clear in the left side display of identity and number of followers. At @ avatars when started no longer are finished. There is another step added for writing to someone.
Much of what made Twitter gain followers and more importantly users has been smugged.
So just as the writer Charlie Warzel has caught up to its power that power has been diminished. It makes Twitter conform to the desired trend, the "Improvements".
Certainly, Twitter is "real life" for the political class. That's the game they have all chosen play. The question is whether the political class reality is reflective of that large portion of society that chooses not to play on Twitter. It may prove to be a different tribe altogether responding to different impulses.
And on the grandest level the question is whether living in the internet universe in all its ephemeral manifestations is an optimal expense of time in terms of leading a healthy and sane life. There is much evidence emerging that suggests it is not -- especially for younger folks who have never really known anything else.
Despite the wonders of electronic technology, there are still only 24 hours in a day. But the information universe continues to expand exponentially. Choices must be made. That is the topic we should be discussing.
3
Claiming that Twitter isn’t real life because the views expressed on it are not representative of the larger population is like claiming that terrorists aren’t real life because there are relatively few of them. So what? Their actions certainly have real life effects. So do tweeters. But as is the case with terrorists we can control how much we are going to let our lives and decisions be affected by Twitter and those who use it.
5
@Jay Orchard - Bravo!
Major oversight of article: Twitter is not a neutral medium like a telephone or podium or highway. It is a private company owned by one (kinda weird) guy, built to funnel users toward balkanized, intense emotion and constant attention. The more people circle the wagons and rage, the more $ Twitter makes. Design essential, not bug. And journalists echo the echoes.
So users are not really thinking for themselves as they form these twitter coalitions. More frequent use, less user autonomy, more power to demagogue du jour, more money for Twitter. It's real but real bad.
6
@keith
Seemingly innocent games like Candy Crush are designed on casino models to get people addicted. It sounds like the Twitter model is similar. And what is it about FB that invites nothing but arguing and negative comments?
Charlie is simply engaged in ex post facto rationalizations... like so many of the talking heads who explain today by referencing yesterday with no clue how today will affect tomorrow.
Kinda like the vast majority of Twitter users.
If you start with "Twitter is real life" you must know that most sensible folks are going to tune out simply because most sensible folks don't even entertain an interesting argument that it is anywhere near real life.
So - prove me wrong - pick a twitter feed from today and tell me how it is going to affect anything tomorrow or next week.
5
This is an excellent article. Much like Twitter, it challenges the self-serving assumptions of the elite, always whispering in our ear. For once, public opinion is swayed by the giant, cacophonous "we," which is as imperfect and fallible as any elite's influence. I am infinitely happy about this change, and this decisive step toward populism and a truer democratic process.
1
A major concern with Twitter is that many journalists seem to glory in having a large number of followers and thus, fall into the trap of believing that their followers are representative of voters or grown adults. That, in turn, leads them to draft opinions that their followers love but is not reflective of wider society. Perhaps they should look at which of their followers makes the most comments and ask yourself how do they get so much time to make all these comments? What do they actually do during the day that gives them so much time?
1
Twitter is a bullhorn in a crowded mall. It is real.
The fact that multiple people are vying for the master bullhorn and that person has not been decided, does not mean that Twitter is not the bullhorn, nor that the bullhorn is not real.
Only when people stop going to the Twitter mall will its bullhorn cease to matter.
Good luck with that.
4
No Twitter isn't real life. It can give some anecdotal evidence and that's it. The vast majority of this country is not on it and what people in foreign countries think of Bernie Sanders has no bearing on American voters. Also, there's no gurantee that the people on Twitter are being honest about their feelings for candidate. Its all suspect. This is from someone who spends an inordinate amount of time on the platform.
Enthusiasm does matter but don't take twitter likes and retweets as any kind of firm evidence.
4
In the end, votes, not tweets, not likes or dislikes, not online followers, are what count.
9
Young people fail to grasp that expressing opinions on social media does not = VOTING.
Yet, when these opinions are expressed everyday, all day, people falsely believe that they are "political activists".
A single vote is more powerful than 1000 tweets.
5
I'm no expert but as far as I am currently ncerned tweets are not the truth until verified by other sources and any one who thinks otherwise has nothing.
3
Twitter does have influence and allows for more direct engagement between politicians and the populace than ever before. But that doesn't mean it's some "Crystal Ball" where people can reliably gauge where popular opinion is, as if it's real time polling. It's ONE of many considerations candidates should take into account. And arguably, not a substitute for real life engagement and commitment to doing more for constituents than satiating their emotional need for a witty, viral moment.
Twitter is only real life if it's not used to spin and mislead in lieu of better sources of information. It's allowed Trump to become a one-man spew to people who trust one politician more than a culture and history of impartial and honorable journalism.
4
Twitter is not real life. Twitter does reflect what some people think but are only willing to say anonymously. Those people are prompted by trolls and bots which run rampant on the site. Reddit is closer to real life. It is generally heavily moderated and forces users to stick to the main theme of a subreddit.
6
Most people do not have the emotional intelligence to handle social media sites like Twitter. As a result, Twitter et al amplify people’s frustration and fears. From the safe space of their phones they lash out and the cycle repeats, each tweet sending a little hit of pleasure to the brain, reinforcing beliefs, and driving more ad revenue for Twitter itself.
Because, after all, the real goal of Twitter isn’t to build a community of thoughtfulness and truth. It’s to generate as much cash as possible for the owners.
12
@M: No doubt they support Trump's campaign lavishly in their gratitude.
Could someone please explain to me who these ‘elites’ are? Are we taking about Trump? Bloomberg? Are billionaires ‘elites’? I’d surely think so, and at least to Trump I’d say that Twitter is ‘real life’ to him (though I’m not on it and as a working stiff I’m surely not an ‘elite’). I love when that word gets bandied about without really defining what the word actually means and who qualifies to be defined as such.
17
@Vince OMG, it's not just me. I can scream at this point whenever I come across the word. As far as I can tell, it now means anyone who doesn't go along with the momentary prevailing opinion, whatever that happens to be.
@Vince: The elite get professionally written obituaries in this newspaper after death.
1
It is definitely not real life. 99% of people are not on Twitter.
And also can we stop using the term "elite" in everything. Elites usually refers to smart people which our society hates for some reason. We should use other terms like "the rich" instead.
17
Everyone is relevant. But those who actually show up on election day make the critical difference.
Until the election, it's all marketing hype.
As soon as the Twitterati organize and show up in sufficient numbers to vote Trump and McConnell out, I will believe in their power for positive change. They skipped last time, apparently. Oops.
To those who threaten "my candidate or nothing," the Trump Re-election Team thanks you for your support. Enjoy the New America, less tolerant and probably a whole lot warmer and wetter than the Old. I'd think twice about investing in coastal city real estate.
8
I spend several hours each day, throughout the day, online. I use an old laptop with a Linux OS and multiple blocking apps. I do not participate in any "social media" platforms and never have. I use the power of the internet to inform myself using many international sources and have learned to navigate the information and disinformation available in order to come to my own conclusions. I am now semi-retired but have spent many of my employed years in the belly of the media beast and we are now headed into uncharted waters. If it is free, easy to use and seems to be rewarding- think again, you are being manipulated for profit and gain. Beware!
3
Twitter is not America either. Anyone in the world can use it and pose as a citizen from any country. Bots also artificially inflate hashtags and cause things to trend (often controlled by foreign interests).
So no. Twitter is not the real life, nor should we listen to it.
11
@Sharon
So...kinda like the commentary here? Who is real, who is a paid hack, who is a partisan divisive, who is black op propaganda...etc. etc. Bloomberg is paying thousands to tweet and comment, to like and ratio.
The digital world is just that, the world.
By the by, Twitter has many respected and learned people, from scientist to journalists, to people in refugee camps. It is very real. Just as it can be very fake. One needs to go in with eyes open. It is a much faster and real time dialogue with the global world.
1
If Twitter from either Trump or Sanders (or the rest of the planet) is "real life" then I am glad I am nearing (statistically) the end of mine.
The "dialogues" on the various NYT "Comments" sections are far more "real life". Real people, really thinking -- short and pithy or long and erudite.
For whatever it's worth, I am not a technophobe. My first program was written in FORTRAN IV and I haven't been far from computers of various sizes or IT ever since.
3
Twitter is one giant, enormous echo chamber.
Just follow those accounts that share your views and - Ta da! - the whole world thinks like you!!
Twitter is next to useless as a gauge to anything. It's a publically available shouting match that is free to join.
I don't believe anything that is predicated on "Twitter opinion says..."
It's all nonsense, non-representative (except by coincidence), unscientific, troll-dominated, Russian influenced garbage.
317
@Dean
I agree.
When thinking about the importance of Twitter, I just remember its first four letters.
13
@Dean
Twitter is only an echo chamber if the user make it to be one. Yes, most choose to do so, but that is not too different from the offline world isn't it. Particularly, taking into account information selection and bias information processing. And, in case, the world does not stop to exists after someone joins Twitter.
Social media are often uncivil but show far more confrontation to a range of hostile ideas than the offline world. Politics are themselves describe as institutionalized confrontation. Conflict is central to the political process.
Exchanges with the other groups might not be as important as the formation of collective identity and the reinforcement and enrichment of inward exchanges. In that sense, Twitter can matter a great deal (and not necessarily for the worse: e.g. Obama, 2008). An aspect often neglected in the overuse of echo -chambers is how homogeneity helps for collective mobilization and help struggle against oppression and domination (e.g. against absolute monarchies, or for women rights). Social media platforms (for politics) are not essentially bad.
If we can simply choose not to believe... claims on truth, superior judgement and scientificity do not go well with choosing beliefs. Social media can threaten in some regard democracy, but aspects of elitism displayed in centrist positions and their monopoly on truth appears more worrying when it disregard people's experiences and ideas and challenge the central pillar of democracy.
6
@Dean Agreed. Twitter just augments our hatred towards one another.
3
I beg to differ.
In real life, you must deal with people face to face. You must look someone in the eye and tell them you disagree with them and why. You must resolve conflict with people in your immediate surroundings and come to reasonable solutions to avoid having each day result in physical altercations or disputes.
On Twitter - you can say all the things you want to say to others in real life but that you don't actually say due to your social filter. Importantly, you don't have to look that person in the eye when you say it. It's a low stakes interaction with little consequences. In many Twitter conversations you're speaking to someone who you don't know and will likely never meet. Or if you do know them, you use Twitter to disagree with them ferociously from a safe distance. So you go ahead and call that person a horrible name. Tell them how they're destroying the country, society, the world, etc. Tell them they are evil incarnate. It doesn't matter, with a few strokes of your thumbs, you can obliterate them verbally and then go finish your morning coffee in peace and quiet on your sofa. And you can do it again, and again, and again all day long.
And that's why Twitter is not like real life. And that's why it's tearing our lives apart.
262
@John
Additionally, in the real world you must be able to communicate and to understand the communications of others that are expressed in greater that 280 characters. Nuance and compromise are very important-or used to be important-in the real world.
50
@John I could not disagree more. Twitter is real life. People feel that they can be more themselves online than in real life. The reality is that people will generally tell you and society what they want to hear while standing in front of you but have a completely different perspective than what they portray in public. It’s the in person contact these days that’s fake.
11
@John If that's really the case - if a 280-character-bottlenecked form of communication truly amounts to "real life" - then we are in very deep trouble. We've never lived in such a complex world - and we're calling a medium where attempts to capture or discuss that complexity are handicapped, if not made entirely impossible - "real?"
You don't see some lethal problems with this?
6
This argument would be more persuasive had it taken a cue from Twitter: Be concise and have a clear point.
When people say Twitter isn't real life, they're not saying it doesn't matter at all, just that it often has blind spots and is prone to mania.
160
@htn I recently saw a well-known "woke" celebrity be criticized on Twitter for using the term "blind spot" as it is apparently considered "ablest".
Mania indeed.
51
@Casey L. Except that a blind spot is a real phenomenon. There is a part in everyone's eyes that creates a blind spot. There are other terms that are ablest, but I've never thought of that as one of them because I know what it actually is. Also of course in driving, there will be a spot that you can't see, particularly dangerous when you pull over and there's a car there.
7
There are three important ways in which twitter really is NOT real life:
1) Twitter is anonymous. As such, it's easy to create sock puppet accounts to push a message with hundreds of thousands of users who do not exist in real life.
2) Real people will express opinions on twitter that they never would express in an interpersonal context
3) There is a huge amount of self-selection bias on twitter. If you aren't on it, you don't know what's occurring there. And lots of people are not on it. I'm not. I have no wish to be.
4
"twitter isn't real life" in that political pundits all follow and engage with one another, so they only know what other pundits think or read.
85
To reiterate many of the comments here, nobody is saying twitter isn't "real life", just that it isn't a reliable sample when trying to gauge national preferences on a particular issues. The people on twitter are mostly loud mouths, who self select because they feel what they have to say is so very important that everyone needs to hear it. These people tend to have polarized views that are engineered to get retweets/likes/responses/etc. I think all that us non-tweeters are really trying to say is that politicians and public figures would be naive to develop platforms around Twitter movements, as those movements tend to not reflect the views of the broader population.
4
It seems you are confusing the figurative expression that Twitter "isn't real life" with the certain truism that Twitter "isn't representative of the general population" or even the probable truism that Twitter "isn't representative of the voting population."
No one is actually arguing that Twitter isn't PART OF real life, with real-life effects; it's simply not a reliable barometer of the broader, non-virtual (read: "real") world.
331
@RPJ
He made a rather obvious point which you missed— before Twitter our mainstream political positions on various issues were largely formulated by small categories of people with very little input from most. This is how we ended up invading Iraq. The Bush Administration, many Democrats, and newspapers like this one pushed the idea that Iraqi WMD’s posed a major threat to America. There was no Twitter then. There were marches and these things called “ blogs”, but opposing views expressing skepticism about what our betters were telling us were largely ignored.
10
@Donald There was plenty of reporting in print, radio, and television that made a strong case that there were no weapons of mass destruction. People knew that the Bush administration was probably lying. I don’t believe that Twitter would have made one bit of difference, just like it made no difference in the perception of the Mueller report or the Trump impeachment.
6
@RPJ
Twitter will go the way of myspace.
It will become trite and archaic and people will scoff at those dinosaurs who still tweet.
2
In my own peer social group, 50's & 60's professionals of all sorts but not journalists, all live in Chicago, not one friend uses or pays attention to Twitter. My kids and their partners (mid to late 20's, software development and financial industry) do not "use" Twitter and roll their eyes and laugh when asked if they do. No doubt something can be gleaned from what is trending on Twitter but I wouldn't extrapolate to generalized conclusions.
13
Twitter is just a place for the hyper engaged to yell at each other from the safety of their echo chambers.
For everyone else politics hardly register until advertisements start appearing on television and on the nightly news. Even then people usually vote the way they always do unless something particularly pressing is on their minds and a certain candidate offers up a solution that they understand and support - see Trump 2016.
9
@Scott McElroy I got off Twitter a few years ago. I am very interested in politics, but that means I read reliable news, watch news networks excluding Fox, read candidates and interest group websites, etc.
I want the perspective of experts, not people with an axe to grind in a free and anonymous medium. You can’t be harassed there unless you’re engaging there.
1
Imagine if Twitter was just another newspaper. Would the mainstream media spend this much time reporting on what that newspaper printed or on the accuracy of that paper's polling?
Any competitor worth its salt would, instead, be racing it to the real story.
If only.
3
The people on ALL social media tend to be the people who yell the loudest - this is not the majority of people.
If Bernie does NOT get the nomination, I SINCERELY hope he urges his base to vote for the nominee...unlike what he did in 2016.
If we land with 4 more years of Trump because Berners couldn't get over themselves and decided to cast a protest vote, or worse not vote, then we will have them to thank.
I appreciate your desire for a leftist revolution - the rest of us don't want you all to burn down the party in the process. Most especially if it's all for naught but 4 more years of Trump.
13
So you've given the example of Biden being mistakenly seen as the front-runner prior to Iowa. Fair enough. However, in your attempt to state that "Twitter is real life," you discount Pete Buttigieg's resounding success in both Iowa and New Hampshire, not to mention Klobuchar's surge in the latter. Warren, a self-styled darling of the 'very-online-left', is virtual toast. Sanders, albeit a strong candidate, runs a campaign that is entirely factional and increasingly exclusive due to the online behavior of its supporters on, you guessed it, Twitter. Sanders continually polling in the mid-20s among democrats and left-leaning independents/moderates would hardly qualify Twitter as 'real-life'. Perhaps this is another case of a pundit cherry-picking cultural moments and trends to validate their worldview...perhaps I'm doing just the same.
5
Charlie, don't you know anyone who is not on Twitter? Or on any social media? Or on Twitter but never posts anything? People who tweet are not a random or representative sample of the general population. All you learn from Twitter is what Twitter users think. They and the opinions and sentiments they express may be real, but only for that subgroup of people.
44
The phrase 'Twitter is not real life' appears to be twisted out of proportion here. It simply means the vast majority of Americans living their (real) lives are not on Twitter, do not read Twitter, don't understand Twitter and probably wish for the most part that they had never heard of Twitter.
75
@Rick Morris That's absolutely not how people use this phrase on twitter. They're using it exactly as he described it.
2
Can we just stop with the overuse (and frankly incorrect) use of the word "elite"?
Seriously, it's become such a part of the ongoing white noise that it doesn't even mean anything anymore - and it's frankly lazy thinking.
As for Twitter, when the leader of the once-free world is setting policy, poking allies and generally threatening global stability with his two opposable thumbs, then yes. It is frighteningly real.
64
I don't like to comment before reading entire articles, but I'm going to make an exception here. Twitter is not real life. However, Twitter has weaseled its way into real life situations (i.e. people being "cancelled" for making questionable past comments). Regarding politics, for all the punditry and Twitter wars that continue ad nauseam, We The People still get the vote in November. Twitter toxicity doesn't decide the presidency (though real-life toxicity very likely will).
10
Meh. If 10% of Twitter users create 80% of the content, then by definition it is not representative of anything that could resemble a majority. This piece is nothing more than attempt to validate the Twitter obsessed left and it's self-loving echo chamber that OFTEN spews hatred at anyone who isn't in-the-club. Of course, let's not forget Trump, who uses Twitter as a child uses an etch-a-sketch, rambling and bumbling about. Twitter is not real life. Period.
40
Don’t use it, never have, never will. Who needs the distraction? As for Instagram? That is an exercise for egotists who want to blast to others how beautiful their “well constructed their lives are.” “Look at me! I am perfect.” I’m a cynic.
9
Ridiculous article. Twitter is so insulated from the entire country. Think about the rural populations that tend to not use social media, their voices are not present in the twitterverse. I agree with KM, journalists just want to validate their venue of expression.
21
@JFK I agree with most of your comment except the part about rural populations. I know rural and even small town people who almost exclusively socialize through Facebook and Twitter. This is actually how Trump conveys and supports his blatantly incorrect misinformation to much of his base.
4
@JFK their voices appear to be well represented on social media. Many of them are Trump supporters.
3
I'm in the entertainment industry in LA. I'm also a native New Yorker from the UES. I'm as elite as this country can get. Very few people I know engage with or post to Twitter, as in maybe five out of hundreds of friends, colleagues and acquaintances. If they do post/engage, they are promoting themselves as performers, or marketing a film/TV show they've made. I personally look at Twitter maybe once every two months. It isn't my real life at all. Twitter is very specific, and attracts a particular kind of person. It is definitely its own demographic, but it isn't a representative cross section of the country or the world by any means.
28
@James
Hear, hear. I dumped Twitter two years ago and have never looked back. And I don't have any friends or relatives who engage with it either, or if they do, it's very sporadic, at best. Nobody wants to deal with the constant toxic drip or keep up with what's "trending." Nobody cares. That's not to say people aren't on it - clearly they are.
But when a good number of the accounts are either fake or controlled by bots or run by paid trolls with a specific agenda, then I disagree that it's "real life." But it does have real world consequences.
That said, Twitter is a toxic sewage pit of one upsmanship, shrieky partisans and journalists who - desperate for clicks - keep the rage machine going.
2
Twitter obviously reflects a slice of real life. Assessing Twitter and its political impacts seems similar to evaluating the general distinctions between primary voters (and what it takes to do well in primaries and thus win the nomination) compared to the general elections; I use elections (plural) because I see the Presidential race as 51 somewhat distinct elections, focused on the goal of winning the right combination to get to 270 electoral votes. That end is the real thing in national politics. Still seems unclear what role Twitter has or will play in 2020, and beyond.
I don't tweet. Does Warzel think that means I'm not real?
19
@Baxter Jones
Apparently, he thinks that makes you an out-of-touch elitist.
@Baxter Jones my favorite comment in awhile, I must say :-)
1
Twitter is exactly like real life: a very small percentage of the users make a very large percentage of the noise, and they tend to be the people with the least to say.
In a democracy, you don't get a government that embraces the policy preferences of the majority, you get a government that embraces the policy preferences of the people who make the most noise (and, if it's America, also the people with the most money). This is why, for example, we have two political parties that take extreme positions on abortion that only about 20% of the American populace actually support: because the other 80% of us don't care as much as the 20%.
Zealots and idiots have a major political advantage in real life, just like they do on Twitter.
4
Really tired of the term "elites"
17
I just despise twitter and all its works. It's users have given themselves over to some nightmarish cult. I refuse to engage with anything tweeted. Those suffering because of twitter abuse absolutely deserve their fate.
Is it real life? Sure. It's users demonstrate for all to see a deep character flaw and borderline mental illness.
7
Discourse in Twitter is toxic. Those that engage in it are combination of hostile supporters of one candidate and bots. There are some entertaining bits but when a topic such as Trump or Democratic candidates are discussed, you can see the lines drawn.
Twitter is not real life means it doesn't reflect the whole but only the vocal side of politics. Pundits, Journalists and News Media use is it constantly to satiate their thirst for immediate news and commentary.
Even Trump uses it to satisfy his need for adulation and triggering his perceived enemies. Less Twitter could add to making this country better but Pandora's box has been opened and can never be closed again.
Tweet yes, but check facts and don't tweet angry comments, Go talk to your friends, neighbors and family about how this election is important to everyone's future. Convince them in more than a tweet but through valid reasoning and facts (but don't over tax them with info, they will turn off quickly).
6
Twitter is not and the elites have nothing to do with it. Twitter is a bubble. The more politicians focus on it the worse off we will be. And in fact, when the big name outlets feed off of it, it makes mainstream press seem like even more of a bubble. Twitter is about tribalism. It brings out the worst in people. It divides us more than it unites us. It terrifies almost anyone involved in it. I've been on it since 2007 and I find it hard to get away from it but I know it does true psychological harm when I spend too much time there. People are called out, viciously attacked. We say things we don't mean. The good thing about it is that it has given a voice to the voiceless but those voices are easily exploited by bad actors. Anyone can be anyone on Twitter and you will never know the difference. It's not good for democracy or humanity but it is incredibly hard to pull away from.
6
@Sasha Stone: I think the quality of moderation makes this site well worth reading.
3
@Steve Bolger I agree. They do not allow for cruel or abusive comments to pass through and that is really what is required moving forward with the internet's evolution, I think. Bring back common courtesy and kindness.
4
Is this supposed to be a philosophical exercise? In that case, everything and anything can be considered "real life". Everything that exists is part of real life, so one could easily argue that thoughts are real life, fiction is real life, and twitter too is real life.
1
If you look at Twitter, you'd think that Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician of all time and would coast to an easy primary victory. You'd think that progressive policies are desired by the vast, vast majority of Americans. In reality, Bernie has failed to crack 30% in the primaries so far, and not a single candidate endorsed by Justice Dems or Our Revolution managed to turn a seat blue in 2018. A recent poll found that "socialist" is one of the least-desired traits in a presidential candidate, while on Twitter I'd venture that it's possibly one of the *most* desirable.
Twitter is predominantly wealthy urban millennials with at least some college education. It's one of the left-est demographics in the US; of course it's not going to be fully representative of real life.
10
You're correct. Twitter drives the narrative.
If you use Twitter, you need to stop right now.
If you stop, you'll quickly discover just how useless it was.
42
@Larry Thiel Thank you! I stopped using Twitter during the 2016 election cycle, and have been relieved ever since!
5
All life is real life.
Social media, pick your outlet, is a collection of fragments that mirror our society. Whether it is Facebook or Twitter, people choose to associate with those whose views they share and block out the rest.
The pundit class is no different on social media than they are in real life, talking only to each other and remaining in their bubble.
The media pushes whatever narrative the establishment wants it to push. Today's glaring example is a Washington Post article on the latest WaPo/ABC poll in which Senator Sanders has taken a clear lead. Open the article and the first few paragraphs contain not one statistic about Sanders, Biden, or Bloomberg. For that, you have to scroll down to the graphic. After the graphic, some stats are given but none on Sanders. This is real life: a life in which we are taken for fools.
A part of our lives now includes political ads, an increasing number of which are nothing more than disinformation from a certain very wealthy candidate who can literally afford to rewrite his own history.
Then, you have the fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
What a life America is living...
7
Twitter is the Electorate laid bare.
I wish it would put on some clothing.
3
Twitter is the technological equivalent of "the mob."
If the mob represents "real life", then Twitter represents "real life".
If mob justice is what you seek, Twitter is your tool.
Let the burning begin!
9
Whoever rules twitter facebook google rules the west .
"Twitter and social media is not real life" I type sincerely into the NYT comments section...
12
Huh? How about those of us on the left who don't touch Twitter, Facebook or any other social media platform with a 10-foot pole?
115
@Demetroula
(Or NYT comments? ;-))
5
@Demetroula
No one I know is Twitter-centered. In my office, I work in a department with ages ranging from 22 to 64. I have never once heard anyone talk about what they saw on Twitter or base a conversation on Twitter. My daughter is about to turn 23, and she and her friends couldn't care less about Twitter, though they do use Instagram regularly. Some, maybe many, use FB, but mostly to keep up with family or to follow musicians or entertainers. YouTube is immeasurably more important to the people I know than Twitter or FB, but YouTube is a source of entertainment and information of the "how to" sort.
Really, nobody who has a real life is a tenth as obsessed with social media as journalists are.
7
Twitter is a cancer on society that is used by a small and unrepresentative slice of the population, including many journalists, which is why they're so quick to defend it. It's not real life, and it's a terrible place to try and take the pulse of society.
Although it is very easy, which means lazy journalists will keep on defaulting to it when they run out of ideas or too close to deadlines.
122
@KM From
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-twitter-users-younger-survey.html
"The Pew analysis indicates that the 22 percent of American adults use Twitter—far less than the 69 percent using the leading social network Facebook."
According to wikipedia, in 2016, the voter turnout was 55.7%.
So not small and unrepresentative, maybe not.
Twitter is, by definition, shallow. That's about the nicest thing that can be said about it. It's appeal lies at our most basic instincts. The need to be recognized, fell like you're a part of something. Yes, it, along with other Social Media, is intended to bring about a more egalitarian world. Which it apparently has, giving voice to the voiceless so to speak. Of course that doesn't mean that it's a better world, just more egalitarian.
13
@Mark Good point about Twitter being by definition shallow. The name itself, as well as the trademark/meme, evokes the chirping of birds. Things are often what they seem.
2
@Matt0147
I frequently use the analogy that twitter is where the bird brains hang out.
1
In keeping with the spirit of Twitter, I just recommended every posting already posted here.
26
@Steve Bolger Alas, I only came here for your content.
2
If Twitter is Real Life then so is "Professional" Wrestling and Prostitution and Illegal Gambling and the Dark Web and the Kardashians and another Rapper killed today and so is just about every poll that had Hillary Winning; All Real Life because they are part of Real Life. So What. Analysts Analyzing the Analysis of how long the 13th guy to drop out of the Democratic Primary lasted because of Twitter? So what?! Please write only about how Democrats need to come together to end this Long National Nightmare.
49
It’s not real life...it’s curated life...it’s at times deceptive life...
But it definitely impacts real life...
11
"Elites just pretend it's not."
Nope.
Sorry, Charlie: trumpie-boy is the ultimate elite - the world's most obscenely fake populist!
Get that straight first, then we'll talk.
52
The use of the word "elite" is malicious and dangerous. It's used to dismiss anyone you disagree with, like when Joe McCarthy (Google it) used the word "Communist" to taint imaginary opponents. Please stop.
104
@David Henry Yes, it's intended to put oneself in the courageous underdog victim role, and the term is never clearly defined. (Though it does have some sweeping modifiers for imagined subsets, like "coastal elites".
Here's looking at you. Pensacola.
10
@David Henry Yes and yes. Before it became a noun, it was and adjective and, as such, never a pejorative, as in "the elite Navy Seals." The word's origins come from chosen, selected. This implies vetted, trustworthy, reliable. One can therefore see why the Twit-o-Sphere would consider it a bad word. Please, call me elite.
4
Get out and smell the fresh air.
It's not.
65
Splitter is a nightmare for politics, a parasitic cesspool teaching future generations that online sound and fury wins.
3
"The medium is the message"
"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan and introduced in McLuhan's book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964.
McLuhan proposes that a medium itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study. He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself.
McLuhan uses the term 'message' to signify content and character.
The content of the medium is a message that can be easily grasped and the character of the medium is another message which can be easily overlooked.
McLuhan says "Indeed, it is only too typical that the 'content' of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium."
For McLuhan, it was the medium itself that shaped and controlled "the scale and form of human association and action."
In Understanding Media, McLuhan describes the "content" of a medium as a juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.
This means that people tend to focus on the obvious, which is the content, to provide us valuable information, but in the process, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time
As society's values, norms, and ways of doing things change because of the technology, it is then we realize the social implications of the medium."
7
This is a really interesting article. The only counterpoint I can think of is that Bernie Sanders is not doing well in the election because he is popular on Twitter. He is doing well because he has a lot of real life, in person support from actual Americans -- not just twitter bots or hash tag warriors. The fact that his faction is boisterous on Twitter just reflects the fact that there are a lot of them.
A candidate who flooded Twitter with noise and chaos but did not have a real world base of support wouldn't be able to magic anything up. Trump, for all his flaws as a person and as a president, obviously does have enthusiastic supporters too.
But I agree with the argument that "Twitter is not real life" is misleading. While it is not representative, the people who do use Twitter a lot exist in real life and many of them honestly believe the stuff they say online.
2
@Abdul Jah "The fact that his faction is boisterous on Twitter just reflects the fact that there are a lot of them".
Well, not necessarily.
It could be that nearly all of his supporters are active on Twitter.
Or that other candidates supporters are less active on Twitter.
You need supporter numbers to decide.
Wait until after the Dem candidate is chosen - the voting numbers will tell us what we need.
2
Allow me to go further, not only is twitter not real life, neither is all of social media, the press, or hollywood (non-capitalization deliberate). In addition the world does not end at the Hudson River and it is certainly not comprised of only the Northeast and West Coasts.
This is classic bubble thinking and will lead to the talking heads getting spanked once again. I realize I am tilting at Windmills here, so carry on. Time will indeed tell.
24
@Bruce1253 Is Time still being published?
It is absolutely vital for the Trumpies to insist, not only that Twitter is "real life," but that no other life is real. Only this way can they keep their base in a state of perpetual ignorance. Only in this way can millions of people believe devoutly in QAnon and think that the Mueller Report is a hoax. And, I'm sorry, if not absorbing my political views from deliberate misinformation on social media makes me "an elite," I plead guilty. The sooner most people learn to automatically distrust any political messaging on social media, the more likely we are to save our democracy.
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There's a part of me that lives in or longs for a future where social media is downgraded just in the sense of overall public regard. Still might be an advertising avenue, or provide quick checkups with neighbors and family, but we're still in love with tech so to me the implications are:
--You need a little device with you at all times, so you can follow all the latest conversations.
-- If you want friends and a social life just like your parents and ancestors had, prepare for an avatar version of it. Or at least the avatar version wielding amazing influence in your irl meatspace dealings.
-- You are expected to show up and be remembered online, and contribute.
-- While you are doing that, there are lots of things to buy that you've been training robots to present to you.
4
Twitter is most definitely not real life if what you mean is it is in any way statistically reflective of the larger US population. It isn't.
In the same way that Bernie Sanders, even as a front runner, represents a minority of Democrats (and an even smaller minority of the overall electorate), Twitter represents a very small and very specific segment of the population.
Do the research. Few people (relatively speaking) use Twitter. By use, I mean post and respond regularly. 22% of US adults even report using Twitter at all, and, of all the social networks, it has the least engaged audience in terms of frequency of use (see Pew) of any social network.
Also demographics are not reflective at all of the overall population (ie "real life"). Twitter is overwhelmingly male dominated (60/40), young, white, etc.
Is it influential? That is a separate question. Sure, to deny its influence would be foolhardy. As would overstating it.
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The problem is that Twitter IS real life.
That is, that virtual reality is increasingly the only reality.
To put it another way, as Marshall McLuhan did,
The medium is the message.”
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@SA
You say "...virtual reality is increasingly the only reality."
Prove it.
1
@SA
And this is what the Global Village looks like.
1
This is an incredible piece. The pundit class does exercise an undue influence on the American political process. In 2016 every political take they had was wrong, and yet they continue to say the same things they always have. It's takes like "twitter is not real life" that allows them to shield themselves against the often substantive criticism of their lifestyle and perspective.
13
@Matthew Actually, you are reflecting the myth of 2016. Hillary lost by 90k votes in three states, but won the popular vote by 3m.
It is Trump's Twitter that turned a small, manufactured victory into an epic landslide. It's Bernie's Twitter that wants to argue that he could have beaten Trump. Neither of which is accurate if you look at the facts.
10
Then call me elite.
Twitter is not a platform that can give any kind of nuanced message. Our thought processes are being dumbed-down to the capacities of our social media.
Log off. Read a book or newspaper. Preserve your sanity and try to renew society's sanity.
17
There are times when I wish Twitter was real life: I'm exposed to great thinkers and activists there who challenge (and affirm) the way that I think about the world. It's an inclusive place where I hear voices and see people I might not otherwise interact with.
And then I read the hateful, derisive, ignorant comments that are intended to hurt the very people who express themselves on Twitter because it's their best opportunity to be seen. The way trolls behave is rarely seen in face-to-face interpersonal interaction (it's hard to act hatefully up close) and it is disquieting to say the least.
We'll find out if Twitter is representative of the electorate when November rolls around. Until then, though, I just know that Twitter represents both what is best about human nature and our worst impulses as well.
1
You need to explain the 1930’s to your readers. Like you most of them have no idea. They weren’t alive then. Neither were their parents.
There was an Austrian military veteran who wrote a book while he was in jail. By 1933 he was an elected presence in the neighboring country. Many of his early followers were just like our president's followers. It was real then; it is real now.
We still have free elections. It is our duty, even if it means voting in Winnie the Pooh, to stop this now. As a columnist you can do it.
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@Joan In California
I highly recommend "Confessions of a European intellectual" By Franz Schoenberner. (1946) The story of a German newspaperman going through Hitler's takeover. Same subject, different media. I don't know if there is a currently in-print edition.
2
Sorry but twitter isn't real life. Not even close.
15
Reminds me of a phrase I believe was coined by the Onion:
“New study finds majority of Americans out of touch with the mainstream”.
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I can find very little about any social media that is "real life."
15
If Twitter is real life; then we are in all in real trouble.
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@A Citizen . And we are.
1
What percentage of the voting public uses Twitter?
8
What percentage of the tweeting public votes?
5
Twitter is life.Actually I started using it after listening to Craig Ferguson’s old late night show. It’s for breaking news and sports. Not for the fate of heart. Not particularly civilized to women.At times,informative,at times full of rage. Funhouse of the alienated, business tycoons and President Trump and every activist for causes and diseases you could or could not imagine.
1
Twitter, as a sound bite, opinion driven communication tool is very real, and for that matter, also very damaging.
It is as real as Facebook as for both create the perfect environment for polarization.
Twitter is so real that Donald Trump would not be Donald Trump without it.
I am amazed how he uses this tool to manipulate the media, who gladly falls for it daily. Forget about the retweet count, who needs it when the media says in prime time “President Donald Trump tweeted today...”, it cannot get more real than that.
We have choices, I for one do not have a Twitter account.
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@ShakingHead: Twitter is like instant wash-off graffiti.
1
One needs a far richer vocabulary than Trump's to compress a complex concept into a twitter-length essay. Most Twitter readers seem to share his handicap.
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I agree with what Mr. Warzel writes here, it is real life, or at least one way that a lot of people choose to participate in real life. I had to leave Twitter. I found it and Facebook to have far more negatives than positives. Completely unhealthy. I'm not claiming to be above it all, either. I have a few tweets in my history that taken by themselves don't reflect well on me. I'll still open Twitter occasionally to see what a few people are talking about, but I am glad that I deleted Twitter and Facebook. I haven't quite figured out a way to divorce Instagram yet.
5
@Scott
I occasionally open Facebook; I have an old friend that shows cute cat pictures. That's about it. The environment is too toxic to spend any time n.
1
@Jumblegym 100% agree. On FB, even the photo/camera groups were bad. I think 50% of the people joined just for the chance to yell "read the instructions" or "that's been asked before" daily.
Just as much as I’d use the enthusiasm around Bernie and Trump on twitter as validating of your claim, I’d also use this as a counterpoint: Elizabeth Warren has earned the ringing endorsement of many of an influential Twitterati, from scholars to celebrities to activists.
Yet she has faltered in general polling, which leads me to conclude that it’s not twitter with the false representation of humanity: it’s the media, who continues to erase her from the rightful podium position she currently has in the primaries.
14
Twitter is just a mode of communication, no more or less "real life" than listening to people at a diner or anything else.
To the extent that the "media and political elite" dismiss it as somehow not being real life, that is just bluster by those trying to preserve their own status. LBJ once stated that if he lost Cronkite's support on Vietnam he had perforce lost the country, but there is no such opinion leader anymore.
For better or worse, information and opinion has become truly democratized and most people stick to sources that confirm, not challenge, their existing beliefs.
6
@Pat Actually, the "democraticization" of information meaning that "most people stick to sources that confirm" indicate that most people believe the lies that Twitter tells and that "democraticization".
If someone around the dinner table told you that a political candidate sold sex slaves from a pizza parlor in DC, would you believe it or MAYBE, JUST MAYBE wonder if you should seek some "elite" confirmation that might involve going to the pizza parlor and checking...
1
@OneView
Democratization means that nobody's opinion counts much more than anyone else's. And if someone told me that "around the dinner table" I could safely laugh in their face without needing to check anywhere.
1
The last paragraph of this navel-gazing is the only important one, from which Mr. Warzel takes the wrong lesson. The fact that so many people use the depth-challenged mode of Twitter to communicate makes both its reality and its corrosive effect on discourse evident.
Let's return to the longer forms of communication, and try to listen and engage honestly and humbly. That too can be real life, if we decide it to be so. We have the time if we want to really know and respect other people and attempt to develop our society, currently on the brink of divisive collapse. Otherwise, we can tweet.
25
The question I have for the author is what about the bots and fake accounts who try to sway opinions? Is it not a dangerous tendency to assume that the opinions on twitter is real when you can't really tell if the person opining is real. I'll agree that twitter will influence real life if we think that twitter is real life.
50
Trump's community also has coalesced and sustained its enthusiasm through Twitter. It's a double edged sword. Of course Twitter is not "real life" whatever anyone means by that. It's a communication tool that overcomes some limitations and imposes others. It's not always a very productive one. It's not always a very representative one. Not all of the people on there are actually real people who believe the things that they are writing or retweeting or whatever. Thank God it's not like real life. In real life, people are usually more polite so that we can maintain some semblance of a society that works together.
18
If a Bernie supporter screams on twitter, but the vast majority of voters aren't on twitter, do they really make a noise? Nope.
156
Of course they do! I'm not on Twitter and I know about the Bernie Bros.
You don't need to be "on" Twitter to know what's being said on Twitter and it having an effect. The mainstream press and media outlets are always reporting on who said what on Twitter.
And to think Trump claims he needs to communicate via Twitter because the "fake news" doesn't report what he says. lol
6
isn't it more like if Trump . . .
@JammieGirl
But you're in the Times comment section, I'd bet that cross section (Twitter users and NYT commentators) is extremely high.
To put words in Paul's mouth, I think hes talking about most Americans who aren't in either.