Passion Power

Twitter gives everyone a voice. It’s the wild west, entertaining at best and toxic at its worst. It has mobilized groups like me too and black lives matter and most recently the Iranian revolution and the war in Ukraine. It is a lazy form of activism. Twitter is not a place for a healthy debate. It is a noisy confused state where context goes to die. It never takes more than a minute or two to find something to be annoyed at and yet I’m compelled to return to the chaos and engage in some bickering with strangers online. As a free speech advocate, I applaud Elon Musk wholeheartedly for buying Twitter. Twitter employees were notoriously shadow banning and censoring one political side. These moral arbiters of truth were using the platform to push their own agenda and they got caught multiple times. Elon Musk saw what was happening and vowed to make it a more level playing field. As the famous philosopher Voltaire once said, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend ...

I work in a little store and people come in and want to talk about the president. Donald Trump does not care about political correctness and uses twitter as his playground. People are obsessed with him and he loves all the attention. His provocative leadership style has turned civil society on its head. What is happening online with Trump reminds me of a time I worked in a sales office managing a group of people. I had zero tolerance for troublemakers. There is always one. A toxic person allowed to run rampant can completely disrupt the flow of a business. I understand why people feel compelled to react. Don’t we all have a little anti-establishment in us? But have we gone too far? Some people think so. This cancel culture online is like the wild west. You will be attacked by a swarm of bees if your opinions are different. To make matters even worse, media groups are profiting from division and discourse and people are being paid online to stir the pot. Did you know that h...