Obsessing over Ghosts: Pokémon Go and Twitter

Twitter has recently been in the news as people have been demanding "something" be done about harassment due to terrible things people have been tweeting about Leslie Jones. All of this is happening against the background of the sudden appearance of Pokémon Go.

Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go is an augmented reality mobile game. It launched a few weeks ago and had the desired effect: Nintendo's stock soared, and for a time made it more valuable than Sony.

The game is an astute combination of 90s nostalgia (if you're under 35, you probably really cared about Pokémon at some point), mobile phones, and the increasingly mainstream elements of virtual goods and virtual and augmented reality.

As might be expected from a highly-targeted mobile game, people are behaving badly. They're looking for imaginary creatures at inappropriate locations. They're not watching where they're going. They're doing obviously dumb things. And in our current world, not everyone can be wandering around in unusual locations without attracting attention. We haven't seen any violence associated with the game yet, but it's really just a matter of time. Much like distracted drivers, people are so intent on finding these electronic ghosts they're putting their actual lives (or at least dignity) at risk.

In the early 2000s, I did some product design work for a company that was going to sell virtual goods for avatars. It felt too early (and it was) but not long after that, young people quickly accepted the concept of virtual goods. And not long after that, somewhat predictably, people started committing crimes to get virtual goods. Some of these were 100% online scams, some were old tricks with some new twists, and a few were straight-up beatings until the user gave up their password. The Korean government had to ban trades of virtual goods for real money.

The surprising part is people are investing such effort into things exist only as ideas and bits on servers. None of it is real.

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Twitter is [mostly] stupid

Lifting A Dreamer
(a.k.a. Twitter Fail Whale)
by Yiying Lu

Twitter is (mostly) stupid. This is not a particularly new thing to note -- others have said this before. I've said it before. But it bears repeating and dissecting.

There is nothing special about Twitter. It is a website. An email list. Instant messaging. Twitter creates no content of its own. It offers no unique functionality. Its product design is janky and impenetrable.

Even its much-tauted "community" is a mirage, or perhaps most accurately, many mirages. Who uses Twitter and for what has changed over time, both as the company pushes for larger audience and acceptance and the early adopters leave for more interesting and useful tools. 

The hashtag is a prime example of the cultural workarounds required to "use" Twitter. You know it's bad design, a racket, or both when there are entire consulting industries built on helping educate you on how to properly #DoItRight and not be a #Loser.

Worse is when normal writing is broken into a series of bite-sized chunks, posted sequentially. Reading them is akin to listening to someone give a speech after they've run a marathon, or while they're drinking half a glass of water after every sentence. It's tedious, breaks the flow of language, and is a kind of textual hand held up that says "don't interrupt, I'm not finished yet".

Twitter's 140 character limitations aren't some sort of artistic liberation. They force everyone to write in a pared-down way that strips language of nuance and style. It fosters a sophistication and pithiness on par with a bumper sticker. Then again, plenty of people think bumper stickers are funny and insightful.

When I read Twitter, I see an endless stream of "LOOK AT ME!" That's really all Twitter is: people wanting someone to pay attention to them, to acknowledge their clever quote or their clever repetition of someone else's quote.

Even my own tweets fall into this trap. I think it's a fundamental part of the form. You can't write, you can just scribble short notes.

I remain amazed that Twitter has, through sheer force of corporate will, become a place people care about. There are people (including some people I greatly respect) who take Twitter seriously, and post there regularly. There are people who feel Twitter has enabled strong cultural movements and helped revolutions. I find that scary and sad.

It's a corporate website, and not a particularly successful one. Twitter's feed of writing from the people you follow mixes in advertising, which has the effect of turning everything -- including those important messages from your cultural movement and revolution -- into grist for selling whatever stuff Twitter is monetizing. You might be fighting The Man, but if you're using Twitter, you're literally working for The Man.

***

Fear of Ghosts

I ain't afraid of no ghosts.

It is said Twitter has a harassment problem: it's easy to create anonymous accounts and send horrible things to people, or write horrible things about people that "everyone" can read.

These capabilities are actually a fundamental part of Twitter's design. The same things people are complaining about are part of why Twitter has grown into its current incarnation: It affords easy, quick, instantaneous communication across groups; and its limitations and social structure encourage people to be provocative and make big statements with the hope of getting followed, RT'ed, shared, noticed.

It should be no surprise that, like everywhere else on the Internet, anonymity + megaphone = terrible behavior.

Leslie Jones repeated some of the awful things people had written about her and identified the accounts that said these awful things, and then requested some action be taken. [Note: I think Leslie Jones is funny and talented; I have not seen the new "Ghostbusters" movie]

Harassment is not a new problem for Twitter. It's been an issue more or less since the platform launched. Why is the harassment of this one public figure (a comedic actor, no less, someone hardly unused to public abuse) such a big deal, and why now?

People have been writing awful things about other public figures on Twitter for a long time. People have been writing awful things about non-public figures, too. When you're a celebrity, part of the job is putting up with people being terrible and saying mean things. That doesn't make it hurt less (and in fact, for many celebrities, who have a deep need for affirmation, it can hurt more). However, it is indicative of Twitter's priorities and general maturity that they will take action to defend a famous person and not the ordinary people being harassed on a daily basis.

Twitter continues to have an arbitrary and weak policy regarding communications on its platform. One might argue that is OK. It's very dangerous for any communications technology to classify behavior or speech as "unacceptable". Everything is "unacceptable" to someone. You're not entitled to free speech in private venues, but Twitter is designed to feel like a public venue, and encourages people to think of it that way.

So you end up in a world where speech is curated and curtailed. "Please leave only positive feedback, or at least only say mean stuff about the people and things we don't like." With the "we" being whichever group is steering Twitter's culture at the moment. 

There's an evolution that happens quickly: groups who want to say offensive things begin speaking in code, and then the code is banned, too.

The step beyond that is getting banned from Twitter for things you said somewhere else...and then pre-emptively disallowed from joining (Should ISIS have a Twitter account? Monsanto? Fox News? Howard Stern? Rush Limbaugh? Noam Chomsky?). This sort of "bleed" and general enforcement of a corporate behavior and mindset is increasingly spreading. Say the wrong thing in the wrong place and you'll lose your job as well as your Twitter account.

I don't know how aggressively Twitter should police what its users are saying. It reminds me a little of a child's playground, where the kids keep running up to the teacher or parent and asking them to do something about the other kids being mean to them. Sometimes, that's just the way it is on the playground, and you either ignore the mean kids, fight back, or leave.

Appealing to The Man to fix it  feels strange and wrong. Worse, I think having that mindset and taking that kind of action is fundamentally disempowering -- it presupposes we cannot handle it ourselves, are not resilient, and must appeal to a "higher authority" -- and that higher authority is corporate. It is The Man. We've already lost, and lost more than the playground fight.

What seems like a better solution is what Twitter did: ban users who are being abusive. The sad thing here is the person they banned had been an abusive jerk for years. He was a legendary abusive jerk, and one whom Twitter had "verified' an account. So he was an official, verified, legendary abusive jerk. Until he made terrible racist comments about a black actress in a just-decent comedic remake of an old 80s movie. That was apparently over the line.

But everyone Twitter bans can create another account. Or have other people post their garbage. Or continue to write mean things on Tumblr or Facebook or Snapchat or Instagram or Reddit or whatever other internet service people use to communicate.

And of course, to hear the troll tell it, he was trying to prove a point, and Twitter took the bait.

Banning people for speaking their mind (as horrible as it is) means Twitter isn't a communications medium, it's just a community, and one that will enforce a mindset by exile. This is great news if you agree with how these bans happen. It's really bad news when governments, corporations, or other powerful public figures (Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton?) start demanding people get banned from Twitter for being unmutual.

It also raises questions about who gets to wield the banhammer and with what criteria. These questions have no good answers, particularly for private companies.

Finally, banning people doesn't solve the problem. Because the problem isn't the offensive speech. The problem is the people and the particular mindset that produced the speech in the first place. You can make them virtually shut up and kick them out of the clubhouse. They'll go start their own clubhouse and simmer, and the culture in each clubhouse becomes a little more insular (and stable). Banning literally and metaphorically ends the conversation, and there are only a few directions for conflict to go when words stop.

Perhaps a better solution is simply this: Remind yourself that Twitter isn't real. It doesn't exist. It's not a real place. And whatever is scrawled there does not matter one bit. That also means the praise you get on social media is as insignificant and unimportant as the hate. 

Instead of valuing, fearing, and chasing electronic ghosts, perhaps we should focus more on what's real.

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Some of you will point out that I have at least one Twitter account. This isn't because I think it's good. In my career as a digital media expert, I am required be aware of and understand things of significance on the internet. Twitter can be fun, like Pokemon Go, but I don't play it much.