Twitter, the microblogging platform as we once knew it, is no more.
 | | Sam Mason |
|
 | By Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
For better or worse, I'm not really a huge Twitter person. I haven't tweeted in years (and let's be honest, I wasn't that good at it when I did), I don't have many followers and, while I still appreciate a good tweet, these days I can go weeks without logging on. |
And yet I still live in a world built by Twitter. I can speak its vernacular (louder 👏 for 👏 the 👏 people 👏 in 👏 the 👏 back! 👏); I'll still check it instinctively during major news events; it's probably shaped my thoughts in ways I don't fully appreciate. Yes, I work in journalism, which makes Twitter's influence inescapable. But at this point even the least online among us have felt its impact in some way. (Remember when Vladimir Putin gave a speech about cancel culture?) Like it or not, Twitter has been important, even if we're still working out the full extent to which it has shaped how we live, think, argue and protest today. |
And so, with the platform in a moment of flux, we thought it was a good time to take stock. Could we tell the story of how Twitter has changed the world through the tweets themselves? Could we produce a definitive* list of the 25 most important tweets? Could we maybe even … rank them? |
We've tried to do so here, with the help of a group of experts, who gamely took on the challenging task of ranking, among others, an early Donald Trump birther tweet against the tweet that got the N.B.A. in trouble with China. Our hope is that a ranked list of tweets can tell a bigger story about what exactly Twitter has been — a force for good, bad or both — and that if the list feels a little eclectic, it is eclectic in a way that is reflective of Twitter itself in its heyday: a place where a short scroll could take you past the funniest jokes, the most insightful comments and the fiercest of dumpster fires. Maybe the reason we've not yet developed an alternative is that it's hard to make a platform that scraps what we hate about Twitter — the venom, the chaos — but also keeps the vibrancy that once made it feel so essential. |
*By definitive, we mean: Please argue about this list on Twitter. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment