John Dickerson

John Dickerson is a CBS senior national correspondent and Chief Political Analyst. He is also a Contributing Writer to The Atlantic and is co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest.

Thoughts about Social Media Posts #1

In order to avoid misunderstandings, we should come up with a system for social media– and Twitter in particular– that alerts people to the point you’re making quickly. For example, this Tweet does an important service calling out despicable behavior spreading lies.

In my response to this Tweet, I would like to suggest a semantic clarification without undermining the original point. Can we create a quick abbreviation for that intent so that we don’t court two misunderstandings. The first, that there is anything wrong with the original Tweet and the second, to convey that the semantic clarification is not on the same moral plane as the original Tweet.

This was my clumsy effort.

“Semantic less urgent question” was my attempt at signposting my meaning. There has to be a faster better way. (+1/Q2) would show agreement and classify the following point using the Eisenhower quadrant system but that’s kinda clunky.  Still: we can either throw up our hands at this mode of communication or create systems for making it more efficient for those of good intent and curiosity. Plus, we’re in the age of emojis, so this idea of quick identification isn’t totally insane, right?

Additional benefit: Creating this norm would force people who respond to Tweets with off topic responses to think twice before offering responses that are not answers, rebuttals that are red herrings, etc. Such a system would allow others to weigh in to classify responses as well.

Okay, going back to writing. Perhaps there should be a symbol for writing that is done to avoid other writing. Like Heart of Darkness to Lord Jim.

2 thoughts on “Thoughts about Social Media Posts #1”

  1. Watching coverage of president trump in Vietnam. No one ever mentions the 400,000 + lives buried at sea when the Vietnamese tried to escape after the fall of Saigon . No one holds the Thai or Vietnamese responsible for the rape and killing of these buried at sea. Why is this not considered a crime? There are numerous first person accounts of those that survived and the brutality of the Thai pirates was merciless. Raping a pregnant woman in front of her husband and then using his machete to cut the husband to death. And then the rapes continued. Everyone hacked to death. He survivor played dead. Again, why does this never get news coverage. It would honor those that died and those that survived to tell their stories.
    I am not Vietnamese but someone who happened to come upon these stories and pass my concern along.
    K

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