New Study Proves Everyone On Twitter Is Terrible

You know how something happens and you look at Twitter (or learn about it from Twitter) and people are going insane within seconds of finding out about this news that probably doesn’t even have anything to do with their lives or industry? How do people get wildly upset about something they just heard about? Isn’t that the job of bloggers?

This is now a proven aspect of Twitter. The Pew Research Center studied Twitter users and found “the reaction on Twitter to major political events and policy decisions often differs a great deal from public opinion as measured by surveys.” And they’re not just excitable and wrong, they’re also way more negative about everything, all the time. But also they are Too Liberal, so they cheer on Democratic election victories and then immediately turn against the Democrat victors for not being liberal enough. Do you recognize yourself in this characterization? I am not asking you, really. I’m just muttering this, aloud.

But it’s not just the people you (and I) follow on Twitter … it’s everyone, everyone with a Twitter account. They’re all creeps, the “negative nattering nabobs of negativism,” as the late great vice president Spiro Agnew once tweeted.

“At times the Twitter conversation is more liberal than survey responses,” Pew researchers report, “while at other times it is more conservative. Often it is the overall negativity that stands out.” Ha ha everybody go hate-follow Pew Research Center. And by “everybody,” of course, I mean urban liberal college graduates in the key 25–49 demographics of oversalaried media addicts: “Twitter users are not representative of the public. Most notably, Twitter users are considerably younger than the general public and more likely to be Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party.”

Photo by Eliya.