Just read this now @IBob Thank you very much for this.

One of the reasons it’s so hard to accept our own complicity here, I suspect, is that it seems to imply a kind of moral equivalence. To accept that you might be behaving online in an unhelpfully tribalistic way, when those on the receiving end of your attacks include bigots and even neo-Nazis, seems to veer close to saying you’re no better than a neo-Nazi yourself. It might even be mistaken for an argument in favour of reaching political consensus by splitting the difference: the “Very Fine People On Both Sides” theory, according to which Nazis and anti-fascists just need to learn to get along. But none of that follows. You’re right, and the Nazis are wrong. The problem, in the Vortex, is that forcefully expressing opinions you know to be right doesn’t seem to bring the world any closer to the way you’d like it to be.

I like this nuanced approach and agree that the problem he highlights is central.

Twitter zingers from prominent liberals in response to the latest Trump travesty have notably failed to lessen the daily stream of effluvium from the White House. But in some incremental way, they almost certainly do cement his supporters’ conviction that liberals are sneering at them – they are sneering at them, after all – which was a centrepiece of Trump’s campaigning, and which risks delivering him a second term.

Yes.

If you, like me, would like to spend less time in the Vortex, you have two basic options. One is to go cold turkey: to disconnect from social media, avoid the news, and pretend none of this is happening, except where it directly affects our own lives. I’ve tried that, but it never lasts

My strategy in the last couple of years has been to stick to the financial press because it has a vested interest in trying to be objective. I often find myself at odds with the politics of editorials but that in itself is interesting as its healthy to have your views challenged. I try very hard to avoid opinion pieces. I try to avoid blogs and social media. I make an exception for SSB because in general it seems less Vortex-like.