Lord Tweeter

This piece first appeared in City Paper's The Mail on Jan. 14, 2015.

“Their assumptions baffle me, but to be baffled is a great blessing.”

So writes Baynard Woods in a recent “Conflicts of Interest” column, and I couldn’t agree more.

Coincidentally, he’s talking about something that’s been on my mind, too, as it relates specifically to the daily choices we make to isolate ourselves online.

If you didn’t catch Baynard’s column this week, it’s about echo chambers, group think, and our disinclination to be around others who don’t share our worldview.

In other words, it’s about Baltimore Twitter.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve been noticing an on-average higher noise level on Twitter these days, one that can sometimes border on a deafening roar and remain steady throughout the day.

We are outraged. And about everything, it seems.

To be fair, these past months have been pretty outrageous. Tragic killings of unarmed black men and subsequent protests, horrific attacks on journalists exercising their right to free speech, misogynistic attitudes pervading the discussions around sexual assault and domestic violence – all have shocked, saddened, and outraged us, and rightfully so.

Aside from a heightened sense of outrage on Twitter, however, there’s another related trend I’m observing, one that troubles me.

Scrolling through my timeline 24/7, as I do, I often see the “truly moral” (read "liberal")  attempting to weed out the “not moral enough” (read "not liberal enough"), a practice that feels alarmingly fundamentalist in nature.

When did we embark on this holy crusade?

Image by Pete Simon, via Flickr, Creative Commons

As an astute Twitterer recently analogized, often we Baltimore liberals on Twitter act as an army of clones who, upon detecting a strange interloper, descend en masse to eliminate him from the world of sameness we’ve carefully created for ourselves.

I’m no different, rest assured.

I, too, have (un)intentionally curated a timeline that will echo and affirm my own sentiments about many things, and it’s jarring to see a tweet pop up that is counter to my worldview.

When it does happen, my usual reflex is to do one of two things: cover my ears or click that big red “unfollow” button. Still, there are many others who will not rest until the sinner is humiliated and beaten down, begging for forgiveness.

Baltimore Twitter, I think we need another way.

Inside of our echo chambers of shared outrage, we have become intent on silencing and eliminating the outsider and, perhaps along with them, any real possibility of the change we so desperately need.

If my friend isn’t “liberal enough”, can’t we still celebrate our common ground and use it for good? If my friend is not liberal at all, can’t we still afford ourselves the opportunity to disagree and be civil?

Maybe we’re all just tweeting so that we can have loud conversations with people who think pretty much exactly like we do about almost everything.

That’s cool. I guess.

I fear, though, we may be missing out on a great opportunity to contribute to real change in this beautiful city we love.

Because, gathering people exactly like you to talk about everything you agree on and excommunicating the dissenters? Sounds like the formula for some archaic, reviled religion.

Without a reformation, the Church of Twitter could be well on its way.