Writes Nicholas Goldberg (LA Times via Yahoo News).
Maybe people will drift away from social media. How did we get so caught up in it in the first place? Trump was part of a wave of excitement over Twitter, and with him banished — along with other vivid voices of the right — it might not have any energy at all. Why look? What's there? An old man babbles about his fresh hope of a brighter future?! If you don't have people to bounce off of, what will you tweet about?
I remember when Twitter first got started. I already had a successful blog, but I thought this "microblogging" should work for me. But almost immediately, I saw how much it depended on going back and forth with other people who were right there next to you on the platform. I was used to sole possession of my blog's front page, and I could chose to interact with commenters on the comments page or link to other blogs, but I had a sense of this being my own place. I liked that. I'll embed a tweet here if I want to go after something I see over there.
But I've watched Twitter develop. It's so full of journalists and politicos who snap back and forth, and Trump fit right in and amped everything up. It's so fast and vicious and crazy. Now, he's going to be extracted? Who will the lefties — the people who are left (in 2 senses) — engage with? Each other?
Do I hope the whole place falls flat? I hate the censorship. And if it falls flat as a consequence, that's poetic justice.
