All ATwitter

It’s time to send this medium a message: goodbye

McLuhan writes that the content of a medium often blinds us to its character. And character is where the real power lies. The power to change society, harm it, even destroy it.

The tweeting Trump has done over the past four years, and especially in the past week, is reprehensible. But McLuhan would argue that the content (his tweets) blinds us to the far greater damage that the character of the medium (Twitter itself) has done and continues to do.

Every time I hear a reporter say, “The President tweeted…”, I think to myself how undignified. How embarrassing and shameful that the leader of the world’s most powerful nation would make this his primary method of communication. How frightening that we’ve allowed it.

How has a platform that has so clearly eroded and corroded our society and culture come to occupy such a central position in our democracy? How has this virtual wasteland become a go-to place for vital information?

I’ve heard people — smart people — say they use Twitter (and, God forbid, Facebook) as their primary source of news. I mean, I get it. Reading The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal takes time. And who has that? Why spend an hour reading an in-depth, superbly reported piece when you can scroll through 20 headlines in a minute and see a new Tiger King meme?

By and large, Twitter is just a giant time suck, a low-rent forum that makes it easy for any coward or nutcase to, as a…

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