Vanity

I have never had a Twitter account but have followed others there often enough to agree with Barton Swaim here (via Alan Jacobs):

The in­stan­ta­neous aware­ness of so much folly is not, I now think, healthy for the hu­man mind. Spend­ing time on Twit­ter be­came, for me, a deeply de­mor­al­iz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Of­ten, espe­cially when some con­tro­versy of na­tional im­por­tance pro­voked large num­bers of users into tweet­ing their opin­ions about it, I would come away from Twit­ter ex­as­perated al­most to the point of mad­ness.

I thought of a verse from the 94^th Psalm: “The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are van­ity.” Af­ter an hour or so of watch­ing hu­man­i­ty’s stu­pidi­ties scroll across my screen, I felt I had peeked into some dread­ful abyss into which only God can safely look. It was not for me to know the thoughts of man.

Kevin Williamson:

Twitter is not the driving force that has disfigured our hysterically dysfunctional political discourse. Twitter is only a technological instrument that helps people to act in accordance with their worst and lowest motives, quickly, frictionless, and, often, anonymously.

Facebook can be pretty bad, too.

“the instantaneous awareness of so much folly” – Snakes and Ladders