the problem is, twitter encourages people to omit as much information as possible in order to make a noticable point that will gain traction. with only 280 characters, the full story is hard to get, and nobody is about to read a thread explaining it. the best you can do is include as much buzzwords and emotionally charged language as possible. so, let's take, for example, the tommy neg tag, which at its best, was a critical misunderstanding of a joke, and at its worst, was accusing tommy of being transphobic and saying he didn't deserve his fame. let's start with a valid criticism that you might see on the tag in the first hour or so of it being there.
"tommyinnit collaborated with a known transphobic youtuber, ksi, and made a joke about dream stans that, though correct, fundamentally glosses over the reason why they hate him, which is that he's transphobic."
okay, fair enough. it barely fits under twitter's cap, but like. whatever, it's still fine. but will anyone read and absorb that? probably not.
you're probably wondering why I highlighted those words. (no you're not, but it's easier to write like this. shut up)
those words are the words people will fixate on the most in that sentence. I mean, the fact that the tag even went so far as to call tommy transphobic when half the people didn't even watch the video it was criticizing (because ksi was in it) proves that pretty well. people focus on buzzwords, the ones that evoke emotional responses in us, far more than they focus on the words in between stringing the buzzwords together.
"tommyinnit collaborated with a known transphobic youtuber, ksi, and made a joke about dream stans that, though correct, fundamentally glosses over the reason why they hate him, which is that he's transphobic."
on twitter, people absorb it as this:
"tommyinnit collaborated with transphobic youtuber ksi, and made a joke about dream stans that glossed over his transphobia."
which sort of omits... about 70% of the nuance in that previous statement? it's not exactly anyone's fault that people fixate on buzzwords. but when people get upset and, inevitably, begin making a tweet about it, the information is already warped. like a fucked up game of career-ending telephone. so let's see how many words we can omit and misinterpret now. we'll assume our twitter user took how they absorbed the first tweet and tweeted it out as is.
"tommyinnit collaborated with transphobic youtuber ksi, and made a joke about dream stans that glossed over his transphobia."
so what can be misinterpreted about this? well, for starters, a lot of people view "glossing over" as synonymous with "excused." so the average mcyttwt user is probably going to take that interpretation. the joking about dream stans will either be ommitted completely OR it will become its own separate thought. so now our statement looks more like this:
"tommyinnit collaborated with transphobic youtuber ksi, and made a joke that excused his transphobia."
which. oh boy. that. yeah that's a lot of information missing. the game of telephone is only 3 people in and we are losing BIG TIME. you'll notice that in all of these statements, ksi and his actions take a backseat to explaining what tommy did wrong. he's so irrelevant to the statement at this point that we can remove him completely. which brings us close to the final conclusion that twitter reached.
"tommyinnit collaborated with transphobic youtuber ksi, and made a joke that excused his transphobia."
"tommyinnit made a joke excusing transphobia."
and the natural conclusion?
"tommyinnit is transphobic."
twitter's shitty fucking culture that prioritizes clickbait and punchy statements over relaying genuine, unbiased information, basically has fucked tommy over big-time. with every retelling, as more and more people who never bothered to watch the video (because it had ksi in it) absorbed half of the information each tweet presented and began making their own angry statements about it. what once could have led to genuine criticism and a learning opportunity for tommy, turned into bashing tommy for things he never did or said. twitter thrives on outrage, and the 280 character limit means that people have to pick and choose what to say, and what to erase, in order to get information about a situation across in a way that will get other people talking about it. Tumblr, on the other hand, provides a character limit no one will actually hit. we don't retell, we reblog. the statements made on Tumblr therefore have to be completely informative and give the whole situation, not just the parts people got upset about. on Tumblr, the longer and more explanatory it is, the more likely it is to be reblogged, which is why hate tags, like those on twitter, are few and far between. because sure, people still misinterpret and overreact, but it's a lot harder to misconstrue a statement over 280 words. in conclusion, twitter can go fuck itself. the very system it uses encourages toxicity and misinformation. if any cc is reading this (though I doubt they are), just... please delete twitter. it'll save you a lot of grief in the long run.
origamiaround
pixelskylines
jacobvanloon
