Over the past couple years, as I've had a steady writing job and ascended from "utter nobody" to "D-list pundit," I find it harder and harder to have discussions online. Twitter is the only social network I like and where I talk to people the most, but as your number of followers increases, the user experience becomes steadily more hostile to conversation. Here's my theory as to why this happens. First is Twitter's powerful tendency to create cliques and groupthink. Back in forum and blog comment section days, people would more often hang out in places where a certain interest or baseline understanding could be assumed. (Now, there were often epic fights, cliques, and gratuitous cruelty on forums too, particularly the joke or insult variety, but in my experience it was also much easier to just have a reasonable conversation.) On Twitter, people rather naturally form those same communities of like interest, but are trapped in the same space with differe
Another idealistic, head in the sand liberal. Someday you will learn that the Peace Corps just exists so that the US can pretend it cares about third world countries while actually exploiting all of their resources to continue its quality of life. You allow the US to continue its Nazi-like oppression of the rest of the world without a qualm. Glenn Beck may not always make sense, but at least he doesn't accept the duplicitous actions of the government at face value. You are actually causing the continued poverty of the people you claim to be helping.
ReplyDeleteI like that you admit off the top that Glenn Beck doesn't make sense.
ReplyDeleteThe ideological head space of your comment is vaguely troubling--since when have Glenn Beck fans given a shit about third-world countries? Or known that they exist? I would think that if Peace Corps were really bleeding tiny, defenseless countries of all their natural resources, Beck would be all for it. (America FIRST!)