Woman sit on sofa holding smartphone cover face with hand feels scared humiliated suffering from … [+]
The real world can be a scary place.
On the social media site X, everything we’re worried about is exacerbated, amplified, and elongated to a tremendous degree.
What could be a civil discourse is more like a cage fight. The issues we care about most are crushed to a pulp under the weight of misinformation campaigns and fake news.
Take, for example, recent X posts about J.D. Vance becoming a possible VP candidate. Just a passing glance through a handful of posts can make you run for cover. He’s being called a sleazebag by one side of the aisle and a “destroyer” of liberals on the other. Instead of a careful and reasoned debate about him, there’s a war of words.
Hyperbole works because it gets more eyeballs. The problem is that some of us are finally getting to the point where we’ve had enough.
I recently spoke with Zoë Schiffer, the author of the book Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter, about the state of Elon Musk’s X platform since her book came out. Her book is an insightful commentary not just concerned with the social media platform itself but also the soul of social media, which seems to be in a place of deep darkness right now.
“The social web feels a lot more fragmented than it used to be,” she says. “I don’t know if we ever truly had a digital town square, but we certainly don’t have one today.”
One reason I believe the town square never happened is that it never became safe. When I’ve seen social media users try and engage in intelligent conversation, it always descends into something that is more debased, coming off the rails quickly and easily. During the election season, it gets far worse because there is something at stake—namely, the future of the country.
“I think the election will give X a much-needed boost,” says Schiffer. “But I also think we’re in a much weaker position in terms of tracking and combating election-related disinformation than we were during the last election. So that’s a pretty scary place to be.”
What this means is that X might become popular again for the next few months, but popularity does not equate to civility. In fact, popularity tends to cause more dissension. Arguments break out because there are more viewpoints and they are higher profile—everyone wants more attention. Perhaps one reason X doesn’t seem as volatile these days is that it’s just not being used as often.
For her part, Schiffer has found safer ground with Threads and TikTok, two apps that (for very different reasons) seem to avoid divisiveness. With Threads, it seems to be mostly the more kind-hearted Instagram crowd lulled into creating an account, perhaps by accident. On TikTok, everyone is too busy selecting a trending song and following the latest trend to post salacious political videos.
Meanwhile, new research that Schiffer mentioned could push X into the limelight again. According to Pew Research, X is a preferred app for searching the news. That could fuel even more political discussion; likely, it will create even more chaos.
