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This is my experience with Twitter. There isn't enough space to write out something in a way that minimizes the chances of misunderstandings. However, I think a big part of the problem is that those explanations are needed in the first place. Why do we so easily jump to awful interpretations? That's how you end up with rage that quickly spreads and even worsens as context for what the person said is lost or the quote isn't repeated at all but instead just the bad-faith interpretation is passed around.

The effects of that go beyond just the awful emotional impact. People get fired for that kind of controversy. (I hesitate to call it "cancel culture" because of the implications in that term of who's canceling who).




>Why do we so easily jump to awful interpretations?

I think the root cause is failure to assess certainty levels. For those people, "I know X" and "I don't know, but some weak evidence leads me to believe X" are exactly the same thing.

So they draw a conjecture based on what someone else said, assume that conjecture is correct, and vomit it as incontestable truth. Other assumers join in, take the anecdote as incontestable truth, and you have the rage spreading like a wildfire.

[Incidentally this kind of behaviour was what made me ditch Reddit. Not the power-tripping mods, or the corrupt admins, but the idiotic users. I'm glad I don't use Twitter, it seems like they fall in the same bag.]




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