Twitter - The Political Gutter!

There is a moment, after abstaining from social media, when one realises that the true narcotic is not the information itself but the manner in which it is delivered: fragments, barbs, half-thoughts. Sixteen days away from the scroll is enough to sober the mind. Upon return, what once passed for intellectual sparring reveals itself as little more than synthetic noise, contrived conflict designed to distract, not to edify. The feed is not corrupted because you left it; the feed is corrupted because it is, by design, corruption.

Why, then, should anyone devoted to serious thought remain? Twitter promises reach but delivers only exposure, exposure to the mediocre, the hysterical, the trivial. It is a marketplace where attention is the only currency, and the cheapest form of attention is outrage. To work within its confines is to submit to its tempo: shallow, instantaneous, forgettable. And when you write for the tempo, you begin to think at the tempo. The platform colonises your mind.

Those who argue for staying will say that one must “be where the people are.” But if the people are camped in the digital gutter, should the writer lie down beside them? Great polemic has never depended on mass platforms; it has depended on clarity of thought and durability of style. Burke did not need a timeline. Orwell did not need an algorithm. If their work circulates widely now, it is because the quality of the work transcends its medium.

The intellectual task is not to surf the current but to stand against it. Social media reduces thought to spectacle: cleverness replaces clarity, slogans masquerade as analysis, and one’s “following” becomes a substitute for intellectual authority. But authority is not built on applause; it is built on rigor, truth, and the capacity to withstand the hostility that truth provokes.

To re-enter Twitter after cultivating higher taste is like returning to cheap liquor after developing a taste for wine. Yes, it burns, yes, it provides a fleeting buzz, but the hangover is longer, and the taste grows foul. Far better to build on sturdier ground: long-form essays, the discipline of the page, the endurance of the written word.

The writer who aspires to sharpen polemic does not need the algorithm’s validation. He needs solitude, reading, and an audience that seeks him out not for amusement but for substance. To return to Twitter is to descend back into the pit and call it visibility. To stay off it is to love obscurity enough to cultivate real depth, until, one day, the world comes looking for what only depth can provide.