CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - OCTOBER 29: Former first lady Michelle Obama speaks to guests at the Obama ... [+]
Social media has become a place for high-profile figures to send critical messages to each other. Often, it’s not the actual recipient who is supposed to notice.
Recently, in a dust-up that is playing out entirely on Twitter, President Trump chided the recipient of Time’s person-of-the-year, Greta Thunberg. The climate change activist responded by changing her Twitter bio to reflect what he said.
The battle rages.
Today, in a message that is not exactly subtle, Michelle Obama posted a retort:
I don’t have any issue with this post, and it’s not surprising.
Twitter has evolved over the years as a source of insider information posted by journalists, celebrities and politicians. The actual user growth has stayed stagnant or declined. In fact, according to one site, Twitter active user counts have declined this year from 336 million users in 2018 to only 330 million today.
I can only assume those six million users flocked over to Instagram. That photo-centric platform has skyrocketed up to over one billion users now and it’s just a matter of time before the app has more active users than YouTube (with 1.9 billion users).
My issue has more to do with how we’re communicating, however.
Michelle Obama is obviously referencing Trump’s attack on Twitter and possibly the outrage over selecting Thunberg instead of the Hong Kong protesters.
This is not a new trend at all. When one high-profile politician or celebrity tweets at someone, another pops up and makes a new ding. We’re all busy trying to piece together which remarks need to be connected and parsed, which is confusing and incredibly tedious. It’s a sign of the times and there’s not much we can do about it, and Twitter certainly facilitates this type of invidious jabbing.
That said, it’s almost impossible to keep up with the constant micro poking and finger-pointing. I blame the actual platform, by the way. There’s something inherently wrong with Twitter in that it has become a platform for flaming and trolling each other. As the user counts decline, the pokes keep climbing.
I’m more in favor of either closed networks like Facebook where at least you can form a group where everyone digs at one another or brand new platforms like Friended that are meant to keep things more civil.
I’m not in favor of isolation. However, what’s happening with Twitter is that it has become a one-to-many platform for high-profile figures to criticize each other.
And, we like to read them. That’s the true sign of dysfunction.
