Comment by kossae
8 years ago
This actually happened to me recently. While I didn’t come out of the situation with “hate”, it provided me a feeling I’ve not before felt on social media.
In discussing a topic with someone back and forth, the conversation devolved quickly into insults from the opposing end, which in turn fueled my discontent for “their side”. However I usually don’t ever engage conversations of this sort online, so my mere participation surprised me more than anything. However, it took a short “cool down” period for me to reassess my feelings and humanize this person in my head more than I had previously. I’m not happy about my participation, but it certainly speaks to your point.
Edit: To add to this, as I realize I didn't address Twitter directly, I strongly believe it was the character limit and short messages that prevented both parties from offering a longer, thought out discussion with more source-backed statements. I'm fully aware that perhaps this means Twitter isn't the platform for discussing "hot topics", but it happens a lot nonetheless so it's certainly an interesting conversation.
Look, it's already fucked. You are talking in a black room via robotic voices, all non verbal communications channels stripped - with twitter there is a harsh beep that silences you or the other speaker every fifteen seconds.
Who in his right mind would conduct meaningful conversations in such manner... no wonder that even plain email ends up so many times misunderstood, even if I pack it with smiling emojis, there's a good chance that the other party attribute this to cynicysm (or vice versa).
At least in the "old times" snail mail made you sit down and think, you could not fire and forget a message because you had to sit down, write it down, put it into an envelope, go to the post office, buy the stamp, write the address and then go back home.
“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
― Mark Twain
That quote is a good indicator of what the quality of the average quick insta-message will be.