I don’t really understand this defense. It seems a bit like saying, “I don’t understand why people don’t like this neighborhood. Sure the murder rate is 10x the national average and cars are stolen off my block every week. But I built a big wall with razor wire around my house and just use Uber, and I have a great life! Why don’t more people just do that?”
Social media is designed in such a way that most engagement is somewhat mindless, so most people like and follow stuff they enjoy on a whim and then can’t easily connect the dots to how toxic stuff ended up in their feed. But beside that, even if you can understand exactly how to curate Twitter into something nice… why bother? There’s zero cost to just hang out in nicer parts of the internet, or, even better, talk to people IRL.
> It seems a bit like saying, “I don’t understand why people don’t like this neighborhood. Sure the murder rate is 10x the national average and cars are stolen off my block every week. But I built a big wall with razor wire around my house and just use Uber, and I have a great life! Why don’t more people just do that?”
I would agree, but many people see it as just "part and parcel of what's necessary to have a city".
I think this is the kind of fundamental disagreement that comes up; what is known and familiar is "normal" even if you admit it's "not great" but what is not great about things that are not known and familiar is "insanely bad how could anyone even think about living that way".
Social media is designed in such a way that most engagement is somewhat mindless, so most people like and follow stuff they enjoy on a whim and then can’t easily connect the dots to how toxic stuff ended up in their feed. But beside that, even if you can understand exactly how to curate Twitter into something nice… why bother? There’s zero cost to just hang out in nicer parts of the internet, or, even better, talk to people IRL.