I love Twitter.
It wasn’t always like that. For the longest time, I was never there, and would only see captures of fun tweets in articles, or the ones friends would forward. It’s a very effective way to keep up to date with the field, but between all my wonderful colleagues, the various pages and channels I follow, and my duties SAC-ing the big conferences (SAC = Senior Area Chair, not Skimming And Cramming), I feel like I have that covered already.
And then there was the 2020 election. Presidential, then the Georgia senate one right on its heels. I needed to know, I needed to be in the trenches with the data crunchers. I discovered the beauty that is ElectoralTwitter. And to some extent, LegalTwitter and AppellateTwitter, when all the crazy Sidney Powell lawsuits started between November and January, with lawyers live-tweeting hearings, and annotating the hilarious kraken messes, combining deep legal expertise with delightful humor. It was such a heady mix of grave historical developments, and goofy details like how they couldn’t seem to enlist the space bar to join the fight against democracy.
There are so many sub-communities on twitter. It’s wonderful — lots of people who really know what they’re talking about. I could lurk and feel like I was part of the action, I could donate to the independent journalist in the field in Georgia, a friendly face who was tirelessly reporting all night on the counts and calling us “you crazy kids,” when an old goFundMe exploded with donations.
Very quickly I found the tribe I was looking for, of data and election geeks who had models of all types of votes, and we were all huddled together watching the counts way before the newspapers had them, and we saw the Fulton county flip in the middle of the night, it was glorious. I loved the private jokes, Maricopa incoming, “have you seen enough”, the memes and light humor.
When democrats won the senate, I was semi-expecting it. My new electoralTwitter friends had produced convincing, detailed data-driven analyses of early voting patterns. Of course, my twitter friends don’t know they were my friends. I don’t tweet, I don’t do anything, I just read. They still felt like friends, and I was getting a strong sense of eerie community, with the warm feeling of my pressing need of the moment being met.
It was time to walk away. Checking twitter takes a lot of time. Back to my normal life of not doing it.
End of 2021 — omicron strikes. The media decide on a collective omerta on long covid. Suddenly, covid is only about hospitalization and death, otherwise it’s mild and no big deal. WHAT ABOUT LONG COVID?!!!! WHAT’S THAT SUDDEN WISHFUL THINKING ORGY?
Twitter. There must be a tribe for that, who refuses to participate in the delirious amnesia. Of course there was. I found the first people through the retweets on the coronavirus quora. People who keep up to date on the research, and post. People who recap the many ways through which covid is weirdly dangerous in ways we don’t yet understand, like this thread from January. People who share my astonishment at the general apathy at the mass disability event being created. The odds of 1-5% for long-term deep chronic problems, while low, are a lottery that I find an atrociously bad deal. Brain fog? Inability to exercise? For years, perhaps decades? I’ll keep wearing my mask in crowded indoors, thank you very much. And don’t even get me started on why there’s a #saveFutureBoners hashtag.
I wish there had been an end to this crisis too, so I could have played the aloof indifferent again, and walked away from Twitter. Instead, Russia invaded Ukraine, so I set out to find the right tribe for that too. I need a 4th twitter account, it’s jarring to have Ukraine updates and the horror of the war interleaved with the Long Covid ones.
I am awed by the knowledge of some of the posters. There’s Michel Goya who posts daily operations updates (in French), with maps and solid analyses. There are people who post fascinating perspectives on how they understand Russia — with a knack for catchy vivid phrases. Like Kamil Galeev and his descriptions of “Babushka fascism” in Russia. And the memes on the Ukrainian tractors schlepping away Russian tanks.
I never thought I would come to see Twitter as the place I turn to in times of turmoil. Yet here we are. Thank you, Twitter.