Read the Tea Leaves Software and other dark arts, by Nolan Lawson

It has come to my attention that many people believe the Wrong Thing. I find this to be an intolerable state of affairs, so this is a blog post defending what is Right.

How do I know there are so many people who believe the Wrong Thing? Well because, like everyone, I use Twitter. And holy moly! My feed is chock-full of Wrong Thinkers.

Sometimes it feels like everyone in the world believes the Wrong Thing, and I’m the last lonely person clinging to what’s Right. There must be a global epidemic of Wrongness. Why else would Twitter fill my feed with so many of these dunces and ninnies and halfwits?

I don’t even follow these people. Why should they be in my timeline, unless the whole world is full of Wrong people?

Every time I see their Wrong tweets, I seethe with rage and eagerly click to read the full thread. I might spend hours this way, thumbing through Wrong tweets. “How can so many people be so Wrong?” I’ll say to myself, shaking my head as I continue to scroll.

Sometimes when I find a really Wrong tweet, I’ll quote it and tweet it out with the perfect devastating repartee. That way, more people who agree with me are exposed to these Wrong views. That’ll teach ’em!

I do have to commend the others who proudly rise in defense of what is Right. On Twitter, I often see them caught in an epic battle with the Wrongers – “34 people are talking about this!” Well, here comes a 35th, joining the fray to fight the good fight.

To be honest, I sometimes get tired of feeling angry all the time. But how can I not be, when the world is full of people who are so very Wrong?

Curiously, the Wrongers seem to come from all sides of any issue, and they are legion. People who use margarine instead of butter, people who peel the banana from the top instead of the bottom, people who crack a boiled egg from the big end rather than the small end. These are exactly the things that drive me nuts, and somehow my feed is full of people who believe the opposite of me on precisely those issues! Sometimes I feel utterly embroiled, helpless, a tiny voice of reason shouting against an angry mob of Wrong Thinkers.

But sadly, this is just how the world is these days. The world is full of people arguing, calling each other out, or watching a fight unfold with the horrified glee of a driver craning their neck to get a good look at a car wreck.

I know this is how the world is, because I see it on Twitter. And Twitter is an utterly unbiased mirror of the world, with no algorithms that subtly push the discussion in one direction or the other, regardless of whether it is good for discourse or compassion or human well-being but only whether it is good for Twitter.