There's an impulse, when discussing politics, to speak as if there exists a single, coherent discourse, a clear public sentiment that can be easily identified and presented as a digestible narrative.
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I can see why this impulse exists. It makes the world seem less chaotic, which is a comfort. And it simplifies the jobs of pundits and journalists who, if nothing else, must go on making claims about the way things are with at least a degree of conviction. There is little room, in that business, for not knowing.
Twitter is often used as a stand-in for this imagined discourse, and its anarchic tendencies are held up as evidence that the civil debate necessary for a healthy democracy is under threat. Take Chris Uhlmann's recent statement that "the rise of anti-social media has fuelled an almost complete loss of civility and the ability to compromise".
Note this particular critique was not issued in condemnation of the harassment and persecution of women and minorities, which is rife and destructive on social media and which Twitter has failed to provide users effective tools to minimise. Those in power who bemoan a lack of civility in online discourse are rarely talking about the proliferation of racism and misogyny.
Rather, Uhlmann's complaint was issued in response to many Twitter users' enthusiastic endorsement of a rural firefighter from Nelligen's advice to the Prime Minister to do something that is unrepeatable in the pages of this publication.
It's important that we don't conflate bigotry and incivility, as they are separate concerns with distinct motivations. Bigotry is poisonous, but the kind of incivility shown by the firefighter and his Twitter supporters is essential to the health of a society, because politeness, although it has its uses, is a convention often wielded by the ruling classes to transform protest and subversion into signifiers of ill breeding. When incivility writ large is said to be a threat to public discourse (rather than focusing on more specific threats, like Twitter failing to ban Nazis who deign to show a minimum level of decorum) it is evidence of a commentariat that is misdirected or misdirecting from threats for which the only political response available to an ordinary citizen is incivility. The Hong Kong protests, for instance, are uncivil.
The problems created and perpetuated by Twitter are, I suspect, more acute than incivility. They are to do with how we account for the personhood of ourselves and others. Twitter is taken by many to represent our societal id for several reasons. It exists permanently in the now, it has the shape of something like a conversation, and its format - requiring brevity and rewarding confidence - encourages users to share strong opinions that glow with certainty. Our tweets are nets assertively cast with the hope of hauling in approval, often disguised as challenges to some imagined opponent.
Politeness, although it has its uses, is a convention often wielded by the ruling classes to transform protest and subversion into signifiers of ill breeding.
My experience of Twitter, which I find both massively compelling and deeply flawed, entails skimming an interminable stream of curated commentary, 280 characters at a time, in a framework that makes thoroughness and, therefore, settled satisfaction, impossible. A Twitter feed floats perpetually on the verge of fulfilment, the sense of an ending one might find in arriving at a book's final line entirely unavailable.
It's easy to respond to this sense of near-but-never-quite-finality by committing to, and taking enormous pleasure in, expressing the kind of certainty that sources its authority from the intensity and speed of its conviction, rather than from any kind of thoughtfulness or nuance. Thus, the platform reduces individuals to an accumulation of pithy opinions. The people we meet are either aligned with or opposed to those opinions. There is no interpretation, only agreement and disagreement.
Those who cry "incivility" as they might cry "fire" buy into this model, as do those who take far too much pleasure in bullying or condemning their fellow users. Because the platform provides no satisfying narrative, we seek satisfaction in judgment.
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Casting judgment makes the ground beneath us feel solid, diminishes self-doubt, and strengthens our sense of purpose. Judgments seem most secure when endorsed by those with whom we are aligned, and when we're unrequired to further explain ourselves, two conditions central to Twitter's appeal. Of course this can lead to incivility, but unwarranted self-assuredness is more dangerous than vulgarity.
There are views and actions that deserve condemnation and demand a vigorously uncivil response. Sometimes, views and actions that are merely unsophisticated or misguided, or even admirable views, will generate such a response, undeserved, and that is the price we pay for making public arguments.
Perhaps it's a luxury, but I'm not made especially anxious by people being rude online. I'm made more anxious by the widespread pleasure gained from unearned certainty, and by the immature joy we find in being so convinced not only that we're right and others are wrong, but that their wrongness writes them off as worthy of our acknowledgment. A world in which our enemies are reducible to their wrongness, and we are reducible to our righteousness, is simply an orderly fantasy. We think we know but we do not.
- Dan Dixon is a writer who teaches at the University of Sydney. He writes about literature, culture, politics, and America.