The battles so viciously fought in this digital gladiatorial arena have a nasty habit of spilling over into ‘real life’, says Moya Lothian-McLean, a journalist who writes about digital culture
The battles so viciously fought in this digital gladiatorial arena have a nasty habit of spilling over into ‘real life’Illustration: Guardian Design; Getty ImagesIllustration: Guardian Design; Getty Images. If this sounds like a sad state of affairs, don’t worry – I’m aware.
There is a certain recognition that online networking spaces such as Facebook, YouTube and Reddit canthe development of extreme, obsessive views. Yet Twitter does not seem subject to the same analysis. In the mainstream, it appears to be viewed as a space where people with existing oppositional, fixed positions coalesce and shout at each other, rather than a furnace where those unyielding stances are forged in the first place.
, hackles raised in anticipation of the most dreaded event: public disagreement. Dissent on Twitter is rarely ever expressed politely: it is gladiatorial. Twitter communities often show up to back their chosen fighter, furthering the sense of “us” v “them”.does very little Even those ostensibly on the same side find themselves locked into death spirals of disagreement. As the academic Julia Bell writes in her clarifying 2020 essay, Radical Attention: “Consensus politics, or even any kind of politics, becomes impossible, because we are too outraged to actually think. So busy interacting, raging and denouncing that we are tricked into thinking we are actually changing something, rather than just responding to these manufactured demands on our attention.
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