One of my recent essays discusses the sorry state of online discourse in economics.
Twitter’s mob mentality would be bad if it only suppressed extreme heterodox views, or if the effects were confined to Twitter. But in fact some very respectable economic thinking has disappeared from public discourse.
The essay links to similar points made by Matt Yglesias and Tyler Cowen.
Every time I read these anti-Twitter posts, I’m going to be thinking about the article below. It would be extremely helpful and insightful if you showed your street cred so that I could actually trust your views.
Full disclosure: I’m an In-N-Out Burger kind of guy.
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I confess that I’ve never tried a Big Mac—because I’ve seen what it looks like in real life.
…
The problem is that this is a professional work of journalism whose subject is a restaurant doing a riff on a Big Mac. Experience eating Big Macs is so directly relevant to executing the story, that the author had to go out of her way to mention that she’s never had a Big Mac. But so do the reporting! Buy yourself a Big Mac and explain the difference between the two. It’s not like this is some kind of impossible assignment — where will I find a Big Mac? How will I get the expense approved?
https://www.slowboring.com/p/big-mac
Not sure I get the point here Kurt. Is it that those of us bragging about not being on Twitter are like the reporter too snobby to ever try a Big Mac?
I was on Twitter very briefly but got off before long because I thought I was better off without being on it. And you don’t have to be on Twitter to see more Tweets than you want to. The news, and the blogs, and even the sports pages, are full of Tweets and Twitter fights.
By the way, I have a Big Mac about once a year which is sufficient to remind me why I normally wait that long. Also by the way, I tried the plant based Impossible Whopper at Burger King. The good news: It tastes just like the regular Whopper. The bad news: It tastes just like the regular Whopper.
Trying to earn some brownie points with our host by doing the heavy lifting on his behalf :)?
Your self-described direct experience with Twitter was a stint of like 20 min. Likewise, our host has probably not spent very much time there either based on his Twitter handle and historical posts on this topic (but he can and should absolutely correct me if I’m wrong).
In short, you’re constantly reviewing and bashing a product that you’re not currently qualified to assess. Just take the plunge already, but heed my advice to only follow FIT picks and people of that caliber. Ignore the rest of the smut.
Also, you’re assuming that the tweets you see in the MSM and elsewhere are based on random samples vs. tweets to drive ratings. I’m guessing that what you are seeing is extremely filtered and biased.
The only reason that Twitter mobs are successful is because they are successful. The minute someone says no thanks (e.g. Trader Joe’s), they are immediately diffused. So, academia and corporations either support their efforts or they are complete wimps. Get some courage already.
>—-“….heed my advice to only follow FIT picks and people of that caliber. Ignore the rest of the smut.”
Do you heed your own advise?
Didn’t you tell me at one point you watch Tucker Carlson every night? Are we to believe you have an hour a day for that but no time at all for his Tweets? Or that he is FIT caliber? You’ve gotta be kidding. He is the prototype conflict entrepreneur.
Consider me skeptical your taste is as highbrow as you claim. How about giving up the smut yourself before you take to the road as a motivational speaker.
I love me some Tucker!
Call it a guilty pleasure, but at least he was willing to report on the purported lab leak many many months b4 the MSM started doing so. I think all of the social media companies finally lifted their censorship ban on lab leak posts like last week?
Any more ad hominems for me or are you ready to address the substance of my comment?
“How about giving up the smut yourself before you take to the road as a motivational speaker.”
Classic! Lol! Thanks for the humor. I accept defeat on this.
Still waiting for our host to demonstrate his bona fides…
Sadly, the ascendant Left will allow open discourse some day, but when the range of views spans all the way from Kamala Harris to Ibrahim Kendi and no wider.