Is this political race showing the ugly side of Twitter?

Posted by Michael Gaines
September 4, 2008

When Twitter first started becoming popular, everyone rejoiced. For the first time, we all knew what we were doing in real time, and it brought a sense of community to the internet. We could all feel as if we were connected to everyone in some way, in real time.

This past year however, I’ve noticed a trend in how people react to political views on Twitter. Every time Obama gave a speech, I saw a flood of Tweets about how awesome the guy is. Almost every sentence he uttered on TV was regurgitated on Twitter along with comments and comments about comments. I had to ignore Twitter for a few hours because of all the noise.

Now with the Republican National Convention underway, there’s a lot of scrutiny over Sarah Palin. Again, I’ve been ignoring Twitter because of the noise. I do not talk about politics on Twitter at all because it’s just something I don’t want get into with people. However, the other day I saw someone on another forum make a quip about Sarah Palin and it was quite funny to me. I wanted to post it on Twitter but I had second thoughts. Who would I offend? Would people understand that it’s a joke? Would I lose every follower that’s a Republican?

And then I asked myself: “Do I give a shit?”

And I answered myself: “No”

So I posted on Twitter:

“GILF?”

It was ballzy for me to do it, but I saw it this way: my friends, my REAL friends, the people that know me and my sense of humor (I’m looking at you, Sarah and Chris) would get it and understand I’m just being a goofball. People that know me peripherally would probably snicker at it. Other people wouldn’t get it at all, and I knew that there were people that would unfollow because of it. So I did something before I posted that, I checked the number of followers I had before I posted it. Then I checked how many followers I had after. I lost 4 people because of that remark two hours after I made it. Four isn’t a lot, but it shows that there were four people out there that were so disgusted with my little joke that they unfollowed me altogether. It made me laugh, but a part of me wondered why people care at all about what I write. Are people on Twitter so completely polarized to one party or the other that they’d unfollow someone they thought was interesting enough to follow in the first place because of THAT?

In the last few days I’ve seen battles break out on Twitter over political views. I’ve seen a lot of arguing back and forth and if I can lose 4 people over a little joke, how many other people are losing followers? I would bet a lot more since I’m pretty much a D-list person on Twitter.

This is what I learned this week. I am not posting on Twitter to make anyone else happy. If you don’t like what I have to say, there’s an unfollow option on Twitter. Press it. If you find that political arguments get you upset, ignore Twitter for a little while. I still believe that these apps need to build in filters so that you could remove posts that have “Obama” or “Palin” or “McCain” in them. The only person I unfollowed due to politics was not because of his views, but because he was practically transcribing one of Obama’s speeches and the NOISE was getting to me. I had to filter out that person just to read what other people were saying. TweetDeck is an application that allows you to filter people into different panes, but it’s bulky and takes up a ton of real estate on your screen, but it may help you filter people out, at least until this election is over.

So do yourself a favor and think before you unfollow. Doing so may be a knee-jerk reaction and there are better ways to filter people out. I generally ignore what certain people say if I know their avatar’s associated with one party or the other. Just remember, at some point you may want to refollow them and they’ll get an email saying ’so-and-so is follwing you”, and they’ll know you removed them at some point.

Politics, Twitter

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  • truth be told with twitters flakiness i don't trust my follower counts with any level of confidence.

    and i totally agree with you on tweetdeck...
    nice idea but the UI is a big fail.
  • Maybe we need an episode of Push My Unfollow.

    :-)

    I saw the same activity as you, Mike. Can't say that I was surprised, however.
  • Absolutely. I have been feeling the same way, as I have had numerous people unfollow me beacuse of my political tweets. But as you said, twitter is MY place to post whatever is on MY mind. And if people dont like it, they can unfollow. I know its not personal - but I think its a little silly. I like following people who dont agree with me so I can hear opposing views. It makes me smarter and more well-equipped to argue my viewpoint.

    Excellent post!
  • My 2 cents: I don't really see an argument why twitter shouldn't be political.
    Sure it adds noise, but some might consider eight million "I just ate a cookie!" messages as noise too. We're just less used to the political kind of noise. And like any form of communication, if you convey ideas that rub people the wrong way they will express their discontent, and maybe unfollow you in this case.
    It really comes down to what you want twitter to be for you I guess, both as a poster and as a follower: be smooth and people will think you're nice. Be strong minded and people will love you or hate you...
  • Matt
    So, your mad because people care and have passion, and strong points of view which often don't agree with each other. Some how I thought that was part of a thinking society. Sure people can be stubborn beyond reason but you only seem to care about this people people aren't agreeing with you. Yes maybe we should all mellow out but I for one am glad people care about the future of their country regardless of whether or not I support their candidate I know I might not be in the majority of this, but your post seems mostly like you were bitten and now you feel bad about it.
  • @Matt,
    I think you should actually READ the post again because the point went right over your head.
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