Nicholas Grunbok's review of X (Twitter)

Date last edited: 05-31-2024 at 05:20PM

   
Rating: Mature 17+

Review:
Title: X (Formerly known as twitter)

Developer (the company/individual who made it): Twitter Inc.

Genre (e.g., First person shooter, arcade, casual, etc.): Social Media

Your rating on a 5 star scale: 1

Primary audience: Mature, 17+

Version: Could not find the version

Platform (e.g., iOS, Android, etc.): Web, IOS, Android, Amazon, iPadOS, Fire tablet

Cost: Free

X, formerly known as Twitter, is a social media platform that was originally owned by Twitter Inc. before it was bought out by SpaceX. After the aquisition, SpaceX changed the name from Twitter to X, however most of the people who use the platform still call it by its previous name. X is a social media platform which users may send out public messages, pictures, and videos to other users. In order for these pieces of media to appear to other users, the user must either follow the person who send out the media or find it on their profile. X has many uses as it can be used by companies to keep public relations by keeping their consumers updated, news companies to post the latest stories, finding others talking about a certain topic, or maybe to just share funny memes with others. Twitter can be a very useful social media app and it was one of the most used social medias in the world.




The First Media Key: Balance

In the book, 'Infinite Bandwidth', Balance is the first media key and is something that all media needs as we must look at both the upsides and the downsides of media. We must look at the media through every angle and all its uses, good or bad. "Without balance, without a willingness to look at media from every possible angle, we can't possible form right judgements." (Gan, pg. 22)

X as a platform has many goods and many bads on the platform. Because of the wide variety of use, the platform can do lots of things for the user and the navigation around the platofmr is very easy. On X, the users can look at new revolving around the world, sports, and entertainment. X also does a really good job at showing you posts that are related to those you are currently following on the platform. However, one thing that makes the app annoying to use is the lack of moderation when it comes to adult content on the app. If you go to a high-profile post on the platform and go into the comments, they can be filled with ads of adult content or videos of adult content.

The Second Media Key: Attitude Awareness

Attitude awareness is the second media key which focuses on the way media interacts with our emotions. Media affects our mood in many different ways and we must be able to recognize when a piece of media, no matter how insignificant it may be, holds some underlying effect on us. All media must help us discern our true good in all circumstances and we must try to avoid anything that leads us astray. "The second media key is really about as much about recognizing the positive attitudes underlying media as much as it is about recognizing the negative attitudes." (Gan, pg. 45). 

The platform X tries to show you posts that relate to you as well as the posts of those you follow. However, it is mostly to the user to see the type of content they want to see so it may vary from person to person, however there can be sometimes where the platform shows you a post that you may not want to see or one that may cause discomfort. 

The Third Media Key: Dignity of The Human Person

The third media key is the understanding the dignity of the human person as the author of 'Infinite Bandwidth' states that “All media should reflect, uphold, and enhance human dignity” (Gan, pg. 52). We must respect the dignity of others in media as if we begin to consume media which does not respect a person's dignity, it can lead us not just to disrespect human dignity in media, but also the real world itself.

Twitter out of all the platforms is notoriously bad when it comes to the keeping of the human dignity. Recently, there has been a phrase that popped up frequently and it began on twitter. The phrase is "cancel culture" and it has become one of the most egregious things of our society. Cancel culture is the idea that if someone has said something in the past that was either harmful or disagreed with any of what the majority of people think, they will get 'canceled'. When someone is canceled, people agree to outcast and bully them by making threats to their life, family, job, or school in any way possible to make their lives miserable. The dignity of the human person is most certainly not respected on twitter, and it is one of the worst things to come about from the platform.

The Fourth Media Key: Truth

Social media can be filled with people who have a false identity of themselves; they post about all the wonderful trips or relationships they have, but don't tell about the real struggle of their lives. They see all the likes and good comments they have acquired, all while turning their true identity aside and living a life as a person who has to be constantly perfect. With this key being truth-filled, we have to see that the media can often lie about what the standard of the human person has to have, causing doubt in people. With truth, we “talk about what really matters and why,” (Gan, pg. 75). We use the truth of ourselves because we want to rid ourselves of the false identity that we have to be constantly perfect, and instead open up and be our amazing selves capable of great things! In social media, we must also strive to keep to the truth and to proclaim it.

Twitter, before its acquisition by SpaceX, was plagued with political movements involving only a single side of politics and attempted to suppress many thigns that had to do with the other side. This idea of hiding other things is a breech of truth as it is through many different perspectives that we are able to see the truth and by limiting the angles from which you can look at a situation, one can become blind to the truth. Twitter now is much better as since the acquisition, the censorship has been heavily decreased, but with less censorship, there comes more problems with stuff such as adult content.

The Fifth Media Key: Inspiring

Inspiration is the fifth media key and one of the most important when it comes to the purpose of media. Media exists for us to use so we can share our experiences, stories, and things that would make the person who receives it inspired to do good and further their life. But if media is used in a way that hurts people and send them down a dark path, we would be using media completely wrong. "Like an arrow pointing traffic in the wrong direction, media at its worst points us in the wrong direction. It misleads us, confuses us, and tells us to take a route that's not only wrong but perilous." (Gan, pg. 86)

Twitter is a platform that is meant for those who want to share an experience, idea, jokes, or anything that someone may want. Although this idea is good in practice, twitter struggles with being one of the most negative platforms because of the ability to share anything without a high amount of moderation for what the person may be doing, which may include things like defamation, which is something that happens daily on the platform. There have been many times where a post advocating for something that is extremist goes viral and it inspires those who see it to do extreme things.

The Sixth Media Key: Skillfully Developed

A piece media being skillfully developed is the one of the goats to create the media in the first place. If a piece of media is not skillfully developed, it fails the very idea of meaning of media which is to send a message to a certain audience. This is because when media is not made well, it cannot show this message clearly or concisely to the audience to which it is meant for. Everyone has experienced this in some respect when you say that the movie that you saw has bad writing or a video game that you played has too many bugs.


Twitter's message that it sends its users is something around the lines of 'say whatever you'd like,' which in itself is an element of free speech, but you don't need to go too far in your thinking to realize that that can be a bad idea because depending on who is using the app, you can get good or bad posts on your feed and the audience receiving those posts may not take them well.

The Seventh Media Key: Motivated By or Relevant to Experience

The seventh media key talks about the audience to whom the media is aimed at. The audience in which the media is directed is important because depending on the person who consumes the media, some may understand it more than others. For example, if you give a calculus problem to a fifth grader, they will have no idea what it means or how to solve it. The piece of media that is made must be directed towards the audience for which it is intended.

This key is hard to apply to twitter because it aims to have everyone as an audience to use their platform, with each user having a feed that is meant to have that single user in themself as the audience. The feed on twitter is not quite the best and it tends to make alot of people unhappy.


Overall, Twitter, or X, as an idea is a good one but the execution on the platform and the things which have come from the platform seem to be a whole lot of bad with not a lot of good as a result. Things like cancel culture seemed to have come from the platform and ever since, it has been terrorizing the lives of many people when we should be open to forgiving the mistakes people make and respecting the opinions that people may have. Because of this, I have given Twitter a 1 star rating out of five as I have yet to see the fruits of the platform be used in a way which is helpful towards society and my vocation.

Seven Keys:
Balanced:
Attitude:
Personal:
Truth-filled:
Inspired:
Skillfully Made:
Experienced:

Overall Rating: 7/35

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