Mia Freedman: Twitter descends to an echo chamber of fury

The discipline of 140 characters was once a delicious challenge — now it’s like walking into a bar brawl.

Former Federal ALP leader gives a fiery interview at the Melbourne Writers Festival in Federation Square. Picture: Ian Currie.

When I joined Twitter in 2011, it was a lifeline. After 15 years of working for Australian Consolidated Press and then briefly Channel 9, I was home alone with my husband, trying to navigate the stressful business of being a start-up. I missed office life.

As much as the politics of the corporate world can be toxic and draining, I’m very much a creature of the office. I love people and conversation. I love the camaraderie and stimulation of working in a team. At home alone in my tracksuit pants working 18-hour days on my laptop, I felt bereft. Loneliness is a hazard for so many freelancers, writers, those on parental leave and anyone between jobs. It can be so very isolating.

Twitter provided not just company, it offered a connection with journalists and others I’d never have otherwise met in my loungeroom, like Leigh Sales, Laurie Oakes, Annabel Crabb and Mark Colvin. I was quickly hooked. The discipline of 140 characters was a delicious challenge. Writers love to craft their words concisely and I’ve always appreciated that skill in others. The ability to consume vast amounts of information quickly by scrolling through my Twitter feed was also seductive. Short concentration span? Ravenous for content? A desire to socialise without leaving home? Tick. Tick.

The performative aspect also appealed to me back then. Most writers are show-offs at some level. Most of us want to be read by as many people as possible. Crafting a good tweet and watching the positive reaction via RTs and replies was so different to writing for print. I imagine it’s a bit like being in a movie versus performing on stage if you’re an actor; that rush of a live audience reaction. It was also a great way to test ideas or, if you were a comedian, try out jokes. Sometimes you’d think you had a pearler and it landed with a thud. Other times you’d quickly bang out a thought and the response would amplify instantly. When you struck a chord, it was intoxicating. But it wasn’t only about the sound of your own voice. Not in 2011.

Because the other aspect to Twitter, the one I strived to explain to social media sceptics who sneered “but I don’t care what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast”, was the way you could post links. Suddenly I could read the internet as curated by people as diverse as Caroline Overington, Stephen Fry, Wil Anderson and Chas Licciardello.

Twitter also had a wonderfully collegiate feel back then. Media people interacted with strangers and each other and everyone tried hard to amuse and impress. For a journalist, it was heaven. Like a big cafeteria where people from all media organisations mingled democratically each day in a way we never do except perhaps at the Andrew Olle lecture.

I can’t recall exactly when it started to change. But I remember it was around 2013 that I stopped reading my “mentions” column. I realised it was as foolish to become addicted to the positive feedback as it was to expose yourself to the increasing abuse, some of it evisceratingly personal.

In recent years, the performative aspect of Twitter has encouraged those hungry for the perceived power that comes with having their insults broadcast to their audience of followers. Even if there are only 18 of them.

Today, Twitter is often like walking into a bar fight. Chairs are flying, fists are swinging and insults are hurled 24/7. It’s a mecca for those who wish to publicly sledge people they’ve never met, with a ferocity often bordering on pathological.

The pervasive emotion on Twitter is angry. The wit has virtually gone (with some exceptions including many of the tweets broadcast on #qanda) and so has the camaraderie.

Most of the journalists and others from those early years have abandoned the platform, driven away by the perpetual shouting, the threats and the way Twitter has become a tool for those eager to distort the words of others into a perceived slur to justify their own outrage.

A couple of angry anonymous tweets can now become the basis of a “backlash” story against you in a mainstream news outlet. ­People then react to the reaction, it quickly builds momentum and the mob piles on.

This outrage contagion is as exhausting as it is tedious. Someone says something, then they’re abused for it, then they retweet their abusers despite people frantically tweeting at them “don’t feed the trolls”, then their abusers are abused and so on until everyone is battered and bleeding and no one can even remember what started the brawl.

To its detriment, Twitter has been colonised by a roving lynch mob looking for blood.

Contrary to some, I don’t believe it’s a left vs right thing. There are those with whom I am ideologically aligned who have been so vicious in their attacks via Twitter that I’ve had to block them.

Yet others with whom I disagree wildly on most things have been utterly civil and our online relationship remains warm and supportive.

I’m back in an office now, surrounded by dozens of people with whom I can communicate in real time. Apps like Slack and group texts have replaced for me the banter I once sought from Twitter.

I still use it for business but never for pleasure. And yet. There are still times when Twitter is the only place to be. On Saturday afternoon when Mark Latham imploded on stage at the Melbourne Writers Festival, live tweets and periscopes from the audience (notably Josh Taylor @joshgnosis) were a must-read for any journalist following the Latham story and an example of Twitter at its shining best.

I am enormously grateful for the Twitter of those early years. It’s where I met some bright stars (like Rick Morton @SquigglyRick), several of whom we went on to employ as soon as we could afford it.

I also connected with many talented writers, comedians and journalists who have become friends and contributors to the Mamamia Women’s Network. Mostly though, Twitter today has become predominantly an echo chamber of sound and fury, signifying nothing. A lot like Mark Latham.

Mia Freedman is the co-founder of the Mamamia Women’s Network