Twitter is great for me. It’s open, varied and has provided me with a platform to meet some good friends what I would have no other way of interacting with. Sometimes it’s a bit of a dumpster fire when Apple releases something or a major event happens but is bearable again after a few hours. Yet, the platform has been almost insufferable for more than 5 years now and the depressing state of American Politics is starting to swallow the internet.
When browsing Twitter you can usually avoid most things with a few blocked accounts and some careful curation of keywords when news stories start to break. It takes some work, but you can get 90% of the way there with a little effort. Yet, at some point, it reaches the point of diminishing returns and feels a little like you’re fighting a raging inferno with a garden hose. Which is easy to sort, you just don’t use Twitter — even though it used to be one of your favorite places to hang out.
Which feels a little like the bullies from school kicking you out of your treehouse but there are much more important things in life. However, what exactly can I do when almost every platform I use is bleeding American Political information, half of which is aimed at causing a fallout, on every visit?
No doubt the topics discussed are important, but they are also depressing, annoying, uninteresting, and fail to have a direct effect on my life. However, it is rammed down my throat at every turn. Reddit is somewhat understandable when you stray into the trading tab, but Pocket is filled with recommendations to read yet more dressing news and even newsletters I previously loved contain nothing but information that heads straight to the bin.
If these sorts of posts are important to you — great, keep on sharing them and taking part in the discussion — but where can I go to avoid such things other than hitting the off button completely? Calls for American Politics filters on platforms started out as a joke by users, but now need to become reality sooner rather than later. For risk of turning people away, and alienating the majority of the world. Please help us, we are drowning in other people’s worries.