Going Terminally Offline

“Was Charlie Kirk just shot?” the text read. Immediately, I go to Twitter. With a few flicks of my thumb, the gruesome shooting video enters my feed. Before I can even process what’s happening, I start reading the reactions. While there were plenty of positive messages like “praying for Kirk and his family,” there were quite a few hateful ones as well.

Then I started to wonder, “How many of these negative messages are even real?” After all, how many people watch a video of a man getting murdered and then immediately go cheer about it? Charlie Kirk wasn’t a brutal dictator. He didn’t physically harm anybody. He literally had conversations and put them on the internet. While he made some controversial statements, he didn’t deserve to be harmed for them. No one does.

His death is a tragedy and my condolences go to his family. How anyone could cheer for such a thing is beyond me.

That’s when it hit me. What I was seeing online wasn’t representative of society at large. It wasn’t representative of most people’s actual opinions and feelings. Those fringe views about Kirk were being normalized to generate more impressions (and money) for the platform.

Not only are there tons of bots and fake accounts on Twitter (which have only gotten worse), but the ability to remain anonymous further exacerbates the issue. There are non-Americans posing as Americans. There are men posing as women. There are those on the right posing as those on the left (and vice versa).

As a result, we don’t know which opinions are real nor how popular they are. When you can buy likes and retweets, you can overstate how much your message actually resonates with people. I know this is happening, but not to what extent.

To make matters worse, social media algorithms literally prioritize the most extreme views because they get the most engagement (and, therefore, make the most money). You can see this clearly in the data (chart from the FT):

As a result, moderate, nuanced views are greatly underrepresented on social media. And I can tell you why—because having a centrist opinion makes you an easy target for those with extreme views. For example, if you oppose illegal immigration and are also against ICE terrorizing people, you can be criticized by the far left and the far right. It’s a lose-lose proposition.

Therefore, the rational thing to do (for someone in the middle) is to stay quiet. Because of this, it can feel like people are more divided than they actually are since everyone in the middle isn’t being heard. Noah Smith summarized this dynamic perfectly:

Remember: Before social media, you would never have seen people saying things like this, or seen people approving of it. It would all be official condemnations and condolences.

Social media is what unleashed the hate and chaos from the lowest depths of our society.

But, even if social media did unleash more hate and chaos, how much of that hate and chaos is legitimate and how much of it is manufactured? We don’t know.

And with Twitter paying people based on overall impressions, the system is incentivizing this kind of behavior more than ever. This change to the platform has even impacted me personally. I’ve had to block long-time acquaintances because their replies became increasingly negative over time. These people would never say anything like this to me in real life, but online it’s a different story.

Social media has broken our brains and warped our behavior. Just watch this video of TikTok user (eldertiktok11) who, in the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting, decided to film the chaos while promoting his Instagram account.

Think about this for a moment. A man has just been shot. There is an active shooter in the immediate vicinity. For all you know, you could be next. And your first thought is to pull out your phone to promote your channel and create content? We are so lost. Though eldertiktok11 has since apologized for his insensitivity, this illustrates how social media can make us lose ourselves.

I’ve talked about these negative effects previously, but this time feels different. I say this as someone who is incentivized to be on social media to promote my content for money and influence. Unfortunately, this trade is no longer worth it. More book sales aren’t worth the negative energy and the altered sense of reality I get from the platform. Twitter no longer feels like anything remotely real.

I’ve tried staying in my lane (on Financial Twitter) too, however, the negativity always finds a way in. The “For You” tab and the “Following” tab have basically converged, so I can’t escape it.

The phrase “terminally online” describes someone who has become so engrossed in internet culture and online discourse (via social media) that they’ve lost touch with the real world. Since 2017, I’ve been terminally online. I’ve followed every major event. I’ve read countless reactions. I’ve witnessed how the frontier of intellectual discourse has evolved over the years.

But, as of today, I will be taking an extended break from Twitter. I’m going terminally offline. I don’t know how long I will be gone, but I do know that I will be giving far more of my attention to the real world. This isn’t a liberal/conservative thing (you won’t find me on Bluesky). This is a preserving my humanity thing.

To everyone who has followed me on Twitter over the years, thank you. I truly appreciate the support. I will still be writing on this blog and posting on LinkedIn, where the culture is more positive (and it’s harder to hide behind an anonymous account).

If I can leave you with one thing to consider, try being a little more offline this week. Spend more time with your loved ones. After all, their opinions are the only ones that will ultimately matter.

We will return to our regularly scheduled financial content next Tuesday. Until then, thank you for reading.

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This is post 468. Any code I have related to this post can be found here with the same numbering: https://github.com/nmaggiulli/of-dollars-and-data

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