Twitmok

There's this old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that's about a diplomatic mission, where they're making contact with this alien race, the Tamarians, and struggling to communicate because the Tamarians communicate only via allegory.

e.g. "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" and "Temba, his arms wide" were phrases that referred to historic events, and a shared cultural history allowed them to derive meaning from just the reference.

It's an iconic episode. Lots of people say it's one of the best. It always struck me as kind of stupid. Like, what a dumb, implausible way of communicating.

I saw this posted on Matthew Yglesias's Twitter feed
https://twitter.com/NeverSassyLaura/status/969035981566328832

It occured to me that animated gif reaction social media posts are basically the same thing. Someone on reddit will talk about something, and someone else will reply with a link to a gif, but sometimes they'll just write "jackieChanFace.gif", or "whiteGuyBlinking.gif", and I know exactly what they mean.

With enough media and shared (pop) culture, I guess it's not that implausible.

Speaking of Twitter, Mike Monteiro published this, which is fairly long, but very good, talking about designers being complicit in moving fast and breaking things in a toxic culture that degrades society so we can make a buck faster than the next guy:
https://medium.com/@monteiro/designs-lost-generation-ac7289549017

We are all working in a system that measures success financially. We are about how much money a movie makes on opening weekend (go Black Panther!), we pay attention to music climbing up the charts, and Jack Dorsey’s leadership was finally vindicated when Twitter posted their first profit-making quarter.

The first sentence of that linked Mashable article is chilling:

It turns out cutting back, focusing, and maybe a little Donald Trump can help make money.

Let’s look at the price of that profit-making quarter. Twitter’s profit came at the cost of democracy. When an American autocrat chose it as his platform of choice to sow hate, disparage women and minorities, and dogwhistle his racist base, Twitter rallied. Rather than shut him down for violating their terms of service, Twitter chose to expand those terms of service to accommodate the engagement Trump was bringing them. Twitter, and every employee working within Twitter, failed their moment. Their ethics failed them. The reason Donald Trump has access to nuclear weapons is, in no small part, thanks to Twitter.