I don't pay much attention to or place much trust in either. I've got a bit of a weird and somewhat unique approach to media and the news which I'll bore you with if you're interested. I tried Twitter for about a year and being totally honest, my family and friends commented that I was becoming steadily more snarky, depressed and intolerant. I was in denial at first but eventually I simply became disgusted at the person I was becoming. Deleted my account and felt like a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I've since then deleted all other social media accounts and honestly have never felt happier. If it counts, this forum is the only 'platform' I'm on.
This betrays a very poor understanding of how social media algorithms work, and especially those fuelled by politics like Twitter. The notion that they help us escape some sort of 'bubble' so that we can swim gladly in an ocean of free speech is demonstrable nonsense. These platforms rapidly pick up on the topics and content you like, and then feed you more and more of it. The sheer speed and volume of information thrown at us gives the illusion that we are not in a bubble, but the truth is most sustained social media engagement pushes us further down our own rabbit holes than can possibly be healthy for society.
There were groups set up on social media well ahead of the game galvanising local support for violent confrontation. I'll post an example from Insta below. This doesn't justify the behaviour of Maccabi fans - as I've said, Israeli tourists are renowned for being among the absolute worst in the world - but to a significant degree the attacks were clearly planned, coordinated and premeditated and had nothing to do with fireworks or flags. Separate to this, if I may make a personal statement which I very rarely do against any poster on here: You have a fascinating fixation with anti-Semitism specifically that goes way, way beyond the fact that David Baddiel is a pillock. I've noticed it across multiple threads and topics and it always follows the same pattern: whenever a story that claims anti-Semitism appears, you are quick to undermine and ridicule it out of hand, often posting about it when no other forum members are discussing it. I find that quite concerning.
And did any of these Instagram groups tell the Maccabi fans to vandalise property, assault cab drivers, chant Islamophobic slogans or mock the dead in a country which backs an arms embargo against Israel? Also, I don't have a fascination with antisemitism: I merely call out liars when I see them, and the sheer volume of false accusations of antisemitism by bad faith actors which our national press accept at face value and then signal boost rather than report on the actual story would be enough to write a book on - if writing a book wouldn't get you accused of antisemitism And it really should have been asked by now if Baddiel and Peter Herbert's campaign of talking utter ****e about us was testing the waters for a wider campaign of redefining what antisemitism actually is just so it could be used to gag criticism of Israeli policy, especially given at around the same time Steve Bannon was creating GamerGate to see if his plans for Trump's first presidential campaign could work in the wild and picked a smaller community to test it out on, especially considering how certain people just so happened to constantly make their opinions known about Spurs fans' chants just so happened to be at the forefront of claiming that Jeremy Corbyn was the biggest antisemite in British history
A portion of Maccabi fans behaved deplorably. A portion of the attacks were premeditated and planned well in advance. It cannot be that difficult to grasp the possibility that both of these statements can be simultaneously true and are not mutually exclusive. Like I said, a fascinating fixation. Myopia perhaps.
What should not be difficult to grasp is that one of these statements is part of a larger whole A larger whole which somehow only gets reported on briefly, before all mention of it gets scrubbed Still no mention from the BBC or Sky about the Mossad escort their fans had, buy the way... Also, your framing is entirely wrong, because if you thought Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were bad when they travel, wait until you hear what they're like for home games where they have a reputation of being second only to Beitar Jerusalem fans not just for racist chants but even assaulting their own black players https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1854994292449677493.html
Somebody's about to get their **** pushed in on trade negotiations... please log in to view this image
I suspect that the way I use twitter is quite different from you. I have two areas of interest I use it for. I am speaking or listening to people I know who I may also contact by email or even person to person. I do not randomly trawl for no particular reason. Of course random or targeted posts appear on my feed but as I am dealing in specific areas of interest I treat them like I do advertising on You Tube. For example, Lesley Riddoch is a well known journalist in Scotland that I happen to know and meet from time to time. On twitter I can keep up to date with her activities in a way that is impossible in any other way. It is similar to the way I use not606. I rarely go on the Premier Board and almost never on others teams boards I am here as a Spurs fan talking for the most part to other Spurs fans. It's a unique way to keep in touch with what's happening at Spurs and what other fans are thinking. The main difference is that on twitter you have to be your own moderator.
The main issue with social media at the moment is Not606 doesn't support Bluesky or Threads (or Mastodon...) in the way it does Twitter or Instagram Which once again demonstrates just what a ****ing dreadful job **** For Brains has done with the platform where he took something which was integrated with half the internet, and utterly ****ed it
You know how people say that there are two wolves inside you? Here's the sequel please log in to view this image
Oh well, looks like Starmer needs to resign The fish rots from the head etc etc please log in to view this image
1. I never had on an account on it, but I did peruse its content when the site search feature was available to non-login access. So if that class of consumer was collectively in mental trouble, then the trawl-bots that led Elon to withdraw the above. 2. My "snarky" pre-dates the IMCPs like Twatter by decades.
An admirable sentiment and what you're describing is very close to how I process media in general. But your position is a million miles away from the utopian 'escaping the bubble' you were describing earlier. If anything, you've only undermined that point by stating that you use social media for two specific issues and only follow a very narrow set of voices relevant to those issues. Escaping the bubble requires us to delve into topics we have never encountered before and listen to voices we strongly disagree with, stacking our own opinions up against theirs. Social media makes this almost impossible because when it isn't spoon-feeding us with opinions that agree with ours at best, radicalise them at worst, when we do encounter voices we don't agree with they tend to be from the vilest and most narcissistic dregs of the human gene pool, so all that happens is we retreat into a fury of self righteousness.
