Greg, writing on gr36.com:

They don’t deserve to die and fade away once the newsfeed scrolls over them. Tweets don’t last, that’s part of why they feel so easy to write out. It’s why you feel so comfortable.

Twitter is “just heading to yoga” it’s not for passing on your ideas. Place some value on your words, please.

I’ve been debating internally about whether to write this post or not. I like Greg, whom authored this piece, a great deal and I consider him a friend¹. I didn’t want to write a post that could come across as confrontational or argumentative. My apologetic English demeanour was, perhaps, taking over. We don’t really have the culture of debating in school, as those across the pond do, as far as I know at least. It’s been some years since I’ve been educated in one. I’ve seen enough American films and TV shows to be aware of debate clubs and the like however, so in that context you can perhaps consider this a rebuttal rather than a direct argument.

With the excuses out of the way, I just wanted to share some thoughts on this topic.

Greg’s point is one that I’ve seen argued quite a lot recently. In a nutshell, the perspective is, essentially, if you have a lot to say, and it has value, you should put it in a blog post. This is a fair viewpoint to take, but blogging is still a fairly niche medium and if you only consider a point to be valid if it’s in a blogpost you’re likely going to be missing out or a wide range of viewpoints. When you look into blogging options, there really are very few players in the game anymore and all of them, to one degree or another, feature a technical barrier to enter. No blogging platform I’m aware of simple asks for a username and password and lets you have at it publishing blog posts.

If only blogged viewpoints are valid viewpoints then you end up amplifying an already deafening echo chamber of technically minded folks. Not every valid issue or thought raised needs to live on forever on Archive.org until the end of time. Sometimes the almost ethereal nature of a Tweet or short post on Facebook suits the time and place of the medium perfectly.

Everyone has a point of view to put across, and they all have a right to do it. The medium people choose to do it is chosen by them because for whatever reason it feels right to do so. The world seems to be in a place it was a long time ago with horrendous racial tensions, sexism, and intolerances. Now isn’t a time to gate-keep how people to choose to share things with the world. We, as a collective race of all shapes, sizes, colours, religious and political affiliations should be focusing on actually listening to as many voices and opinions as possible. To learn from them and absorb as much as possible. We can all do better in this regard, some a lot more than others.

Enjoy as many diverse voices, through as many mediums as you can I say.