Given the drama on #EconTwitter I just want to ask one thing: Why is it that econ twitter exists? Why did economists collectively decide that the best platform to centralize their discussion on is one that punishes nuance, length, and is a hole for trolls with 0 moderation?

If somebody makes a mistake and phrases their tweet in an insensitive way, you can't edit it. If somebody wants to have a discussion, they can't get a decent response because you can't type more than half a paragraph without dominating an entire screen (and this is on desktop).

We live in 2020, there's so many other platforms for people to use, and I hate the fact that I have some sort of social obligation to create a twitter account while also having an obligation to basically never use it

lest i accidentally phrase something badly and then bring the unwashed masses upon me and obliterate my job prospects forever

i would literally rather we use econfacebook or econreddit or econyoutubecomments because at least on those platforms you can actually respond to people with a slight bit of nuance by using things like "paragraphs" and "links" and your thread is still readable

i also want to note the irony that in this "thread" should just be one comment and yet i literally had to split my paragraphs into multiple tweets because they were too long for twitter. thats what this platform does to you