How To Build a Better Cancel Tweet
Tech Tribe Dispatch #64
💡 Think:
For the month of June we’re sharing Chasidic Wisdom for Tech and Social Media.
“There is nothing more crooked than a sharp word.”
- Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi
Social media is an incredible tool. It can connect us across the vastness of the earth, serve as a public square for us to gather in our communities of choice, and also help us hold responsible those who would choose to abuse their power.
And here the path becomes crowded with brambles.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my own Social Media usage - how to improve it, how to channel it as a means to add in light.
I often think about the relative status I have on social media. The 10,000 plus followers on Twitter (thanks for your follow!), the blue checkmark, the swarm of responses. When I retweet someone - especially with a quote tweet or a screen grab - am I creating the change I want? Or is it a dunk?
Am I actually communicating ideas to the person - or just building my brand on twitter, the rabbi with the righteous kvetching, and getting that rush of communal approval?
Social media - platforms like Twitter and Instagram - has been compared to the world’s largest MMORPGS. We get ‘points’ with each retweet, like, reply and share. We level up with more followers. It’s gamified our experience, giving us the reward of the attention we all crave . . . but at what cost?
There's value in making something truly negative known, to hold people in power accountable. But the gamification of it, especially as it often turns onto people of relatively little, if any influence, troubles me. There should be no pleasure in the act of sacrificing someone on the alter of the web. This isn’t some ancient Roman blood sport.
Chassidic doctrine demands that before rebuking another, one must first trim his or her own "fingernails," in order not to gash the other. We need to take a little out of ourselves, experience some degree of self-sacrifice through the act of removing our extremities. After the "nails" are trimmed "hands must be washed." In a Chasidic sense this means calling forth intellect into emotion. Making sure the action is one not purely on a gut level, but one that is reasoned and calm.
Only then can the person be reproved.
In the long term, removing some of those stats that serve as eye-candy and reinforce the dunk would help Twitter as an app.
But even then, the ultimate arbiter of how to act is incumbent upon us.
Let’s do it together.
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🚪Bless up! Get your mezuzah on!
🎧 Listen:
A play on a classic Yiddish song:
Your father greases wagon wheels
Oy and your mother steals fish in the market
Oy and your brother is a gambler
They should all be healthy and strong!
Your uncle hangs around streetcorners
Your aunt a street-peddler
Your brother sits in prison
Your sister is... ai-di-di-dai-dai-dum
Histalkus, Hendel Leiberman
📚 Read:
✍️ The Great Al Jaffee from Mad Magazine has retired at 99. We’ll be sharing more about some deeply moving parts of his life and his work next week - but for now read about his retirement.
😢The New York Times remembers Rabbi Yisroel Friedman, Yeshiva Teacher and Scholar, who passed away at 83. A victim of the coronavirus.
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