Dan Hannan on why Twitter is so left wing

Yes, here’s what Hannan … er, tweets about Twitter’s lefty bias:

Why is Twitter so much more Left-wing that the population at large? Here’s a theory: it lends itself to angry, self-righteous and emotive statements. Conservative arguments are generally too nuanced to fit into 280 characters.

But not that argument, it would seem.

I note with interest that Samizdata supremo Perry de Havilland found this tweet to be of interest too.

I have heard it said that Trump and Trumpists have done very well with Facebook, and that this is a source of deep embarrassment to the people who run Facebook. But Trump has done famously well with Twitter too. He is the master of the short, sharp verbal missile hurled at his enemies in a way that again and again seems to enrage them.

Trump is very self-righteous and sometimes very emotive, but seldom angry. He knows that being angry is a sign of weakness, that you’re out of control. Angry is what the people on the receiving end of his tweets more commonly feel.

Time for me to stop this. It’s is getting far too nuanced.

One final point, though. I think that the social media, Twitter especially, have done a great job of showing how very nasty and destructive so many lefties are. They used to be thought of as people who meant well, but were a bit dim – aka “idealistic” – about how the real world worked. Now, they are more and more regarded as evil, as people who simply hate the real world and want it smashed to pieces.

LATER: This Thomas Sowell book, which I read a long time ago and must take another look at, seems pertinent to the above.

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