Twitter vs. The Dinner Table

"Your opinion is your opinion, your perception is your perception--do not confuse them with 'facts' or 'truth'."  John Moore

A funny quote for a piece that runs in the Op-Ed section, but recently I spent some time on a social media platform that I do not normally use, and it seems that many are confused over the differences between facts and opinions. I finally took the plunge and started using Twitter more, and honestly, it still eludes me, for the most part. It's easy enough to sign up, write a Tweet, and post it, but it's a little more complex trying to figure out replies, follows, and retweets. It's a numbers game, and that's probably where the disconnect lies for me. If your Twitter account has a lot of followers, more people will see what you post. Throw in the right hashtags (those words with the # sign in front of them) and even more people will see it. That's kind of the name of the game on Twitter; you want to get the most amount of people to see what you have to say. Quantity seems to count more than quality, but that's just my opinion, it's not necessarily a fact. See how that works?

The Twitter arena is huge. Worldwide the platform has 330 million users, and 145 million of those are daily users. That's a lot to wade through, so narrowing down exactly what you want to read and talk about can be difficult. I'm following a lot of journalists, but I deliberately chose a wide range of outlets and people to follow. Some would say there are two sides to every story, but I would disagree. There are way more than two sides to every story, and if you only pay attention to the parts of the story that align with your stance, you won't have a complete picture of the issue. I really just cannot fathom not being aware of other points of view, even if some of them make my blood pressure spike. Who wants to live in an echo chamber where no new information is ever considered? Well, it seems plenty of people on Twitter want to do just that. 

My debate skills were not honed online, but rather at home. Growing up, the dinner table at my house was often the scene of some heated discussions. More than once my father would make a point while waving a piece of steak balanced on the tip of his fork around in the air, and getting all red in the face. My mother was the moderator, and when she started clearing the dishes, your time was up. More than once a dinner roll might have been tossed at someone's head, but that was mostly my brother. My father's favorite way to end a debate was to say, "Well, when you can show me proof of that, let me know, until then it's just you spouting off, so sell that nonsense somewhere else." More often than not, the next night would find one of us tossing a newspaper clipping, or a book on my father's plate and saying, "Now what do you have to say?" Truly, it was a better education than any class I ever took.

Twitter is nothing like the dinner table at my house. There's no food, and there's no one to clear up the dishes after a particularly snarky debate. It's also more complex, at least for me. One user could say something, and if another user replies with a different point of view, all Hell breaks loose. Hashtags are flying instead of dinner rolls, and everyone is "atting" each other. That's another part of it. If someone mentions you, they do so with the @ symbol and your "handle" which is your Twitter username. It's sometimes considered aggressive to at someone. Please, many of these users wouldn't have lasted ten minutes at the Kelley dinner table. The names we used had no symbols and were mostly sarcastic. Aggressive, at least when making your point, was required. No harm, no foul was the only rule and it worked for us. 

Perhaps Twitter should be more like the dinner table? Whoever is making the meal, decides what gets served up. Whatever winds up on the plate can be taken or left, and often requires a grain or two of salt. If it's something you don't like, you don't get to decide it's wrong, it's just not what you like. One person's favorite meal is another person's cereal night. Yes, that is an oversimplification, but don't we all need things to be just a little simpler right now, and not quite so chaotic? For now, I will probably stick to just scrolling through my Twitter feed, and not engaging much. I'm still up for a debate, I just prefer to be face-to-face, over something delicious, so at least if I get my butt kicked, there's dessert. Happy Tweeting, and if you want to follow me, that's fine, just don't expect much, I'm still new at it.