There was some mudslinging on Twitter this week and that, and a conversation with a friend, got me thinking about mudslinging on Twitter.
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Twitter is a fun thing and in some ways a great way to comment and communicate. It is usually the fastest way to find out who got rain and how much and who is making some harvest progress.
This week the Ontario government declared a field near Guelph to be the official soil of Ontario and of course people spoke up in favour of Chatham-Kent Brookstone Clay, some eastern Ontario voices were heard, and if the patch of dirt where I grew up wasn't as tacky and sticky as the worst Kent County clay I'd have spoken up for Northumberland.
But that's all good fun and maybe even Twitter at it's best.
Sadly, however, Twitter is often used for the other kind of mud slinging.
I know advocates of social media say it is a great tool and it is, and I agree. But any tool can be misused.
I think a lot of people sometimes forget that their comments are out there forever or almost forever. And I think they also forget sometimes they are public. Very public.
And that causes problems.
We all have our political perspectives, and some of them can be somewhat fluid. For example, I don't support a particular political party, I tend to like those that are currently supporting policies that I do support. So I might react in a negative or positive way to any of them. I know I have done this on twitter, but here is why it can be a problem:
Twitter isn't private, it isn't personal and it isn't something that you can only direct to your contacts.
So if a contact of yours makes a comment or questions a politician for example, and you respond that said politician is an expletive, the politician WILL find out about it and may assume, the person posing the original question feels that way, The original person may, or may not, but your response has now ensured the question will never get answered and may get both of you blocked from the politicians list. Your re-tweet may get re-tweeted a number of times which means you can never delete it, and it ties your comment to the original one.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you should never express an opinion, twitter is great for that. But the level of discourse just recently is sinking.
And and again, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you can't put a bit of zing, humour of sarcasm into your response. Good debates often have all three.
By all means use twitter to put forward your political views and if you want to do so at a low level, that's up to you. But be aware you aren't proving anything, and you may just shut out everybody who saw the original tweet from the conversation. If all you want to do is share your thoughts with people who already agree with you, that's your tactic.
However if you want to engage others who aren't sure, or try to swing someone to your point of view, sinking to a low level won't do that.
Twitter, like any other tool, works best when it is used as intended.
