The Twitter Travails

Hackers

The third type of follower has some special skills. They are hackers. Some hackers are cyberstalkers and trolls, but some do it for fun, without any malicious intent. Despite the origin of intent, the outcome of the action is to take over the celebrity’s account, deface and demean for a short period. This show of strength through their special skills puts them in the third and separate category.

Hacking is like sex, you need breath, in the last step, you feel incredible pleasure, and the best time to practice it is at night.

― Amine Essiraj

The intent of hackers is sometimes just a show of strength and the high of breaking in. They are essentially thieves in the cyber world. They would break in, but whether they would steal or not, would depend on their nature.

Cyberbullies

Cyberbullies are special types of trolls and stalkers. They are ‘angry’ individuals looking for trouble, who get off on harassing people. Bullying stems from anger and self-loathing.

When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you’re angry, everything looks like a target. There are a lot of angry people in the world. And these days, they’re all online.

― Jennifer Weiner, Big Summer

Cyberbullying can hurt the victim.  The safety net of virtual media is broken down, and the bully can reach into the head easily reach the victim’s head and mind resulting in disaster.

Why Twitter?

One might wonder celebrities, trolls, stalkers, and bullies are present everywhere – real and individual world. They are present in all forms of social media. So what makes Twitter a special case?

It was the greatest Internet invention till it is not.

The dream at the dawn of the internet age that giving everyone a platform would birth a new Enlightenment seems cringe-worthy today, now that we are living with bots, trolls, flame wars, fake news, Twitter shaming mobs, and online harassment.

― Steven Pinker, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

The original noble intent is all gone now. As we saw, since 2016, social media has consistently devolved. The owners, managers, and participants of Twitter have taken the platform to new lows, often to cringe-worthy levels.

I don’t want to pick on any individual, but the platform has reached a point of no return. The last straw is when the platform went private, and is now the essential tool of one individual, who is rich and mighty. Again, there might be noble intentions, but it is my personal opinion that whatever good may happen is too little, too late.

Twitter is the gutter of the Internet . . . it’s just all trolls, bots, and cheap shots.

― Kevin Kolenda

So what do we do?

Quit Twitter if you feel the toxicity. Dismount the dead horse.

The horse was supposed to be noble. But it is toxic today and has reached a point of no return.

This may happen to us on any social media. The short point is to quit smoking toxic fumes. They may give us a high, but they will kill us.

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you’re on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies. You can change riders. You can get a committee to study the dead horse. You can benchmark how other companies ride dead horses. You can declare that it’s cheaper to feed a dead horse. You can harness several dead horses together. But after you’ve tried all these things, you’re still going to have to dismount.

― Gary Hamel

I have quit Twitter since I wrote this and won’t return. It has given me a lot of mental peace.