Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Well, unless something you write is retweeted out of your network and thus put in the face of ten thousand people who -- for whatever reason -- can't wait to explain to you why you are wrong/awful/should die, because the abuse will come in faster than you can block the accounts. You lose your ability to shape the experience then.
Source: I've been RTd by Zoe Quinn, so I've had a l'il taste.
I take your point, and I can see what you mean to some degree, but I'm not sure I
entirely agree. I had to look up who Zoe Quinn was, and though I am aware of the whole Gamergate issue to the point that I know it happened and, on the periphery, the very lightest understanding of what happened, I don't know of the tweet you made or the reaction to it (ie, was it to do with the whole Gamergate thing (assumed?), who was it in support of, etc...) By saying Twitter can largely be whatever you want it to be, I assume that whatever you became embroiled in was because you entered into the debate on what had became a big Twitter/social media storm. I'm only guessing that you weren't tweeting about Jake's love of Iberian Pork Lard to get retweeted and receive whatever the outcome was?
I suppose if you tweet about or in relation to a specific issue which you know is creating a lot of noise on social media, or to or about the people that have a lot of influence and are drawing a lot of attention on certain matters then you have to be aware that there is a chance that your message will be noticed and put to a wider audience, or found through keyword search, etc. I think some people actively seek that kind of attention, by directly addressing or including via @ or .@ specific prominent accounts. I'm not suggesting that was the case with you, but I have seen it on Twitter. In all that, there are some that like to enter themselves into the thick of the debate, and I think some of the time hope to be embroiled in something. I don't understand it myself, but that's because I don't use Twitter that way.
It may be true that somewhere, some day, Stephen Fry or Donald Trump or whoever retweets me and simply doesn't like the fact that I knit English rather than continental style, and I am on the receiving end of thousands of continental knitters ire, but I think I am less likely to have the same experience as you as I use Twitter for enjoyment only and don't really tweet anything that would be likely to draw significant attention from anyone prominent. I do think that the issues that some people throw themselves into on Twitter are important, such as Gamergate, such as the feminist cause, such as all the ills that plague our society, but that's not why I go on Twitter, so I shape my usage away from that.
There are terrible things that happen around the world every day, and there are plenty of bad news stories to keep the 24 hour news channels in full employment, but I may choose to only watch 15 minutes of TV a day and for that 15 minutes to be nothing but episodes of Sarah and Duck, and my Twitter feed is much the same: fun things, things between friends, pictures of sheep.