Glenn Reynolds hates Twitter, too

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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Appearing on the terrific EconTalk podcast this week, Glenn Reynolds of the University of Tennessee (and the wildly popular Instapundit blog) explained why he doesn’t like Twitter.

“[T]he bad thing about Twitter [is] it’s emotionally agitating — if you pay a lot of attention to it,” Reynolds averred.

When host Russ Roberts probed to find out his concerns, Reynolds continued:

The 140 character limit, I think, encourages people to be more provocative.

 

There’s something about Twitter that encourages a lot more sort of just back-and-forth slap fights — and I think that’s a lot of it.

 

But I don’t know, I just don’t like it.

 

I mean, Facebook as a social media forum is sort of more social and less media. I think Twitter, on the other hand, doesn’t have much of a social aspect really. And I think it just seems to be harsher. It’s more like people sort of driving by and yelling something out the window at each other.

“Twitter was going to be the next big thing,” Reynolds said, “and my sense is it’s never quite been the next big thing.”

“Journalists love Twitter,” Reynolds conceded, before adding that he personally finds it “unsatisfying.”

(In addition to Twitter, Reynolds and Roberts talked about economics and libertarian politics. My favorite non-Twitter moment came when Reynolds explained “The Raj Koothrappali Approach to Constitutional law.”)

The Twitter discussion came toward the end of the podcast. Listen to the whole thing here.

Matt K. Lewis