My Twitter Dunbar number isn’t 150. It isn’t even 99, but that’s what I’m working with as a provisional ceiling. It’s all too easy for me to see how this medium can work as really destructive junk, and I value it too much to just go along with that slide. So I’m determined to overcome social inhibition and wield the ax.

This is my public position:

Every tweet chips a piece out of peoples limited stock of attention — repetitive babblers are noise pollution.

— Outsideness (@Outsideness) February 23, 2014

The medium works its junkie magic because ‘unfollowing’ is an implicit act of microsocial aggression (whatever its rational motives), triggering primate brain-chemicals associated with social signalling. It’s as if you had suddenly declared an unwillingness to any longer pick ticks out of somebody’s fur. At a certain point this monkey business has to be over-ridden, or deterioration is all-but inevitable. People who aren’t prepared to to protect their time — even at the cost of social discomfort — will get nothing done. That’s the threat of social media, as a disease.

Continue Reading