I wrote this during the pandemic year. I stand by it still, mostly. Just be warned that it is from Old Claymore.
The rise of social media, for good or for ill, has fundamentally changed how we as a species interact with one another and technology. One such social media platform is Twitter. I believe that, if one examines the evidence of how the platform functions, one can easily come to the (entirely accurate) conclusion that Twitter was designed for the express purpose of making people hate each other.
Let us consider the breakdown of how the site functions for a moment. Users are allowed to post phrases of 140 (though now 280) characters or less onto the feeds of other users. At this point, other users may re-share the message with or without appending their own 140 character block. That's it. That's the site's entire purpose.
But what, I ask you, can be adequately communicated in so little text?
Well, advertisements for one. Corporate marketeers love Twitter because it's just sanitized enough to keep users coming back. They can post their marketing on someone else's platform for free, and the public will circulate that marketing material of their own volition thousands of times more than the company would have been able to achieve for money. This is probably the most legitimate use-case for Twitter, which means that the best possible use for the site is literally just as a marketing platform that users, somehow, opt into.
What else, though? Complex thoughts and ideas simply can't be communicated in so few characters. What can be communicated, though, are extremely simplified versions of those thoughts and ideas. The problem, unfortunately, is that human nature is such that taking complex ideas and simplifying them in this manner will inevitably result in discord. People may agree entirely on a complex idea and remain at one another's throats over the simplification of it.
Consider the example of food stamps. The idea of foodstamps is not a radical one. In any system, capitalist or otherwise, there will be people that do not perform to the level required to eat. Nonetheless, we recognize them as human and desire to care for them in some way. So a system to ensure that these people are fed is created. But the system is clunky and top-heavy. It barely functions, and people are mad, and so they go to Twitter to express their dissatisfaction. Person A writes, "Fuck food stamps, fuck welfare, #burnitalldown," while Person B writes, "god i just fucking wish i could buy baby food today." Each sees the other's post and feels their hackles rise. Person A sees Person B's post and immediately asserts that person B is a lazy piece of shit, unable to care for their children, while Person B sees Person A's post and immediately asserts that Person A is a petty sociopath who wishes for the starvation of babies. Sides are taken and the discussion immediately turns into a pointless shitflinging competition while the actual problem, that being the dysfunctional welfare system, goes entirely unaddressed.
Qui bono?
The State.
By providing the People with an outlet for their entirely legitimate concerns that, by nature of its functioning, delegitimizes those same concerns, the State conveniently sidesteps the issue of having to actually solve anything. If people are too busy blaming one another for ontological bullshit, they will not have time or energy to direct at the actual source of their problems. Twitter is an intentional misdirect, an intellectual false-flag, designed for the express purpose of keeping the People divided and at each other's throats.