“Twitter is not real life.”
This was, for a long time, the comforting salve that people like myself would apply to our poisoned brains whenever we finally worked up the self control to close the app and get back to work. Twitter is just Twitter! It’s dumb and pointless and a waste of time. Sometimes beguiling? Yes. But ultimately irrelevant.
The idea of being Twitter Famous was a kind of ironic curse. In the fake, digital world, perhaps you might have some influence. Hell, your audience might even be enough to fill football stadiums. But here on terra firma, you were as anonymous and pointless as most anyone.
The Long 2016
The 2016 election shook out some belief in this idea.
After all, Wikileaks and the DNC and Clinton Emails and the Trump Train and on and on — these were potent ideas that Twitter (and Reddit, and Facebook) had elevated. Maybe Twitter was starting to become real life.
But while they may have originated online, they metastasized into the political discourse through talking heads on CNN and New York Times headlines. Or so we told ourselves. Twitter still wasn’t real life, but some of the people on it were real. So in a way, if it influenced them, it could have a secondary impact on real life.
That was where things were for most of the first Trump administration. He’d tweet, people would melt down about it, the world would keep spinning, and we all still kept applying that trusty salve.
Twitter isn’t real life.
Then COVID-19 happened.
We All Move Online (For Good?)
You remember that part. No one could leave their homes. Sports were cancelled, and then aired in eerie silence. Movies bypassed the cinema and streamed straight to your TV. And, of course, you used the internet way, way, way more.
For work. For leisure. To communicate with friends. To shop. To do anything and everything. The real world, functionally, stopped existing. All that was left was the virtual world. Real friends were as distant as online friends. Conversation over dinner was replaced with conversation over Discord.
Famously, this was how Q Anon and the Big Lie really came into power. Thousands of people left the real world and dove head first into the virtual world. The next time they came up for air was when they stormed the Capitol, convinced by a cottage industry of influencers and YouTubers that the election was stolen from them.
Since then, more and more of our lives are lived online. It happens in ways you don’t notice until you do. Menus disappear and are replaced by QR codes. You text with friends to stay in touch until you realize years have gone by without seeing them. You don’t really hear about things by word of mouth anymore, rather what’s served to you on Instagram or what someone says is good on Reddit.
And, crucially, you get your information about the world and its goings on from social media. Whichever app, Twitter, BlueSky, Threads, Reddit, whatever — is mostly irrelevant. The app shows you what it shows you, and that’s what you learn.
Twitter Might Be Real Life
So, if people get all their information from the internet, do much of their socialization on the internet, and rely on the internet for everything from securing sustenance to actually doing their jobs, the fact is that the internet has become the real place. And the real world, now, is the place we escape to.
I’m not the first to make that observation. Hell, the notion of a fake world replacing the real world dates back long before the internet itself even existed. But it’s no less relevant — our perception of the world is shaped by our internet use.
The time has come to stop denying it. Twitter (and by extension, the rest of the internet), is real life. And it’s time to act accordingly.
In order to shape real life and make it better, we must shape the internet too.
What does that mean for you and I, fellow liberal democrats who believe in the international community and the contemporary liberal order?
Unfortunately, it means we need to post more.
A lot more.
This is the Political Battlefield; You are a Soldier
If you believe in liberal values, which is to say values like fairness, liberty, equality, the rule of law, but also in liberal virtues like kindness, respect, generosity — you have a moral obligation to suit up and fight for those values. That was true 250 years ago when the first patriots fought back against the British regime. It’s true today.
Thankfully, there’s a lot less being asked of you today to fight that fight. You don’t need a musket and to say goodbye to your family.
You just need to post.
Post on BlueSky, post on Instagram, post on Reddit. Hell, post on Twitter. Social media didn’t used to matter, but guess what? Now it does. And we as liberals cannot cede that ground to others.
For too long, we’ve viewed this as a wasteful distraction. Something to be mocked and derided but not invested in.
But what has “Twitter isn’t real life” actually gotten us? Are we any less brain broken? Of course, not.
What we’ve gotten is a far-right pipeline on Twitter, on Twitch, on YouTube. A Gen Z cohort who found Trump amusingly gauche instead of constitutionally unsound. The return of slurs as popular slang, the disdain for social order and cohesion.
It’s gotten us Hasan Piker, Taylor Lorenz, and anti-Ukrainian apologia. Another Gen Z cohort who believes (((monied interests))) are controlling the Democratic Party and a failure to repeat leftist shibboleths is a treasonous offense.
It’s meant that the internet is full of terrible ideas. And the people with good ideas think they’re too smart and clever to waste time posting about them online.
For too long, we as liberals have felt above it all. Social media is dumb; its battles a waste. And for a time, maybe that was true. But it’s time to wake up. This is the actual battle we are losing.
Members of Congress are believing outright lies about their fellow party members based on … posts. An account called “Track AIPAC” can convince tens of thousands of people that AIPAC has invested in a race it never touched. The President of the United States can post that a ceasefire is back on, and the markets automatically go up.
That’s the world our absence has enabled. That’s what takes up the space on Twitch and YouTube and BlueSky and Twitter when you stay silent.
You want to know why young people are more skeptical of democracy than ever? Because the people posting the most online are the ones who value democracy the least.
It’s up to us to fight back. It’s up to us to fill the void.
Reality is being created as we speak. Do you want to shape it, or let others do it for you? Because we’re seeing now where that reality leads to, and it’s nowhere good.
Does it feel a bit silly? You bet. But we’ve got to get over that.
The war has been going on for years. It’s time we all actually suit up and enter the fray.