It's not hard to trace the team each person sees themselves as part of, on Twitter. Their followers, likes…

It's not hard to trace the team each person sees themselves as part of, on Twitter. Their followers, likes and replies to their threads will identify them. And sometimes they even set up groups, which makes it even easier. /1

Once you do that tracing what people actually say becomes much less relevant, it's all positioning. It's the team sports I Tweet about, groups at school jostling for dominance. The groups extend out into wider life too, into formal institutions, politics, the media etc. /2

Most of the 'debates' we see here every day aren't about ideas at all, they're about building and sustaining these groupings. Any idea can be co-opted to maintain group unity. Why we've seen ridiculous things like questioning the use of masks for airborne pathogens. /3

Or made-up concepts like immunity debt, and 'living with' pandemic viruses. Etc. It's all positioning, maintaining the group in opposition to other groups, particularly those identified as enemy groupings. This is the social media business model. /4

It literally takes the social structure of the school playground, and extends it through every demographic. The anxious search for identity, allying oneself to this or that group to define who we are individually. The 'media' in social media is the wrong word. /5

It suggests a neutral transfer of information. Social media is group-building platforms, not information-sharing platforms. Information is always socially structured. It's why people are addicted, the information is more gossip than science. Even when it *is* science. /end