2/ thoughts are not actions. You can rage in your thoughts about your brother, or someone at work, even fantasize about them dying--but you have done nothing and are guilty of nothing, and you need to forgive yourself and learn how to calm yourself down. -->

3/ This is, I imagine, what Catholic confession is for, though you are, I gather, obliged to do penance for your evil thoughts. But remember--they are still inside you. They are between you and you. Since 2007, people have a means of externalizing that interior monologue ->

4/ and this means something. A researcher at MIT saying, rather than thinking, "I really want to see that video of Charlie Kirk dying again because it works better than my anti-depressant" has become a public act. I see it. I am affected by it. The public discourse is too. ->

My sense of how the world works and what people are really like undergoes a change. I become rageful, and believe people who think this way are evil. It's likely they are not. They just have a means of externalizing the parts of them that no one ever saw. ->

6/ But another human tendency, the tendency to extrapolate from individual samples to the whole, kicks in then as well. I will assume that anyone and everyone like that MIT researcher is an enemy of everything good and is unsalvageable. In that way my world shrinks. ->

7/ The part of him that dehumanizes Charlie Kirk and turns his assassination into a joke then threatens to dehumanize me in a way. And seriously, before social media, I would never even know he existed, or that he thought what he thought, and that was better for him and me ->

8/ "Use every man after his desert," Hamlet says, "and who should 'scape whipping?" Meaning: if the world knew what was going on inside us, we would all be punished viscerally for it. Until 2007, for the most part, the world would not, could not, know. ->

9/ The question is, and I mean this literally: Can civilization survive now that we have been made witness to the interior lives of others? Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry and George decide they are going to share their deepest, darkest secrets? ->

George goes first. We don't hear his monologue. We only see Jerry's face when he's done. And he is frozen in horror. And George is his best friend. END.

@jpodhoretz Excellent thread

@tobyharnden thanks

@jpodhoretz "THEY" made me do this. Yesterday.

@MahGill um...that was a response to something a public figure said publicly on a television network, not a lone individual.

@jpodhoretz @semaforben The “danger” is liberals who are so numbed up with drugs by radical feminists, they don’t give a shit anymore!!!

@jpodhoretz The nation’s founders put their fantasies in action. They wrote the Declaration of Independence, killed their enemies, and gave us the United States. Living your fantasy is good. Be like the founding fathers.

@jpodhoretz Sorry John, but celebrating a death of a non violent American is not a mere “fantasy” It is a sickness - an evil that cannot be excused as acceptable And why do they go to SM? It’s because they have no fear of repercussions for posting the most vile shit That ends NOW!

@jpodhoretz FFS, doctors and nurses are posting gleeful, violent comments and videos. They aren't looking for relief like therapy or the confessional when they post the abhorrent reveling in the death of a political opponents. They would gladly put an air bubble in our IVs if they could get

@jpodhoretz I’ll buy your argument to some extent, but that post from the MIT researcher is psychotic. And there’s a valuable lesson to be learned from having to own up to your assault on the public conscience. If I’m being ghoulish by my enjoyment in watching these adolescent brats get

@jpodhoretz Social Media is like anything else, it has its purpose but can be abused. People are 100% responsible for their own thoughts and actions and SM or the media in general only has so much to do with it. We are who we are whether we write about it or stuff it. I read a lot more good

@jpodhoretz People have published their internal dialogues for any centuries. In the form of fiction, theater and the arts (for instance), which can be extremely disturbing. Social media is different of course because of the scale and the speed. We have to come to terms with this reality,

@jpodhoretz This reminds me of the Online disinhibition effect, as describes by Mary Aiken in her book the Cyber Effect. She compares it to drunkness. It is certainly much easier to unleash your darkest thoughts through a screen, than directly to another human being in the real world.

@jpodhoretz @threadreaderapp unroll please

@jpodhoretz Or the MIT professor is a piece of shit who is saying exactly what he thinks because all leftists are pieces of shit.

@jpodhoretz I was raised catholic but I do not go to church. My early teaching taught me to always be better. I told my kids if you can look in the mirror and liked who you were you are doing okay. Our country has gotten away from god. You need something to guide you in life.

@jpodhoretz Most people are aware that their inner monologues are not suitable for public consumption.

@jpodhoretz Sit this one out. You till have the blood of innocent children.

@jpodhoretz I think we need to reconsider what social media is and what we allow into society through it

@jpodhoretz Thoughts manifest in the universal consciousness and subsequently in physical existence. And yes anonymous social media is a perversion of nature and should be eliminated.

@jpodhoretz Oh realllly Meanwhile 48 hours ago

@jpodhoretz @threadreaderapp unroll

@jpodhoretz I consider myself sane and happy because my internal monologues and fantasies are not just internal. Perhaps this is a healthy approach to life as doing so shines a light on where initial internal monologues and fantasies are unhealthy. Pursuit of observable reality is healthy.

@jpodhoretz Agree with all of this, but this is the world we live in. Far too many people, especially young people, live their lives on social media. Solving that is an enormous task, and I doubt it can be done. At least highlighting those who publicly express very odious views will maybe

@jpodhoretz Maybe I'm unique but I've said nothing on Twitter that I wouldn't say to others. Also many of these people celebrating Charlie's death also would say that out loud in certain groups.

@jpodhoretz “Social media is where anyone can say anything without worrying that they can be punched in the face,” Mike Tyson. Great thoughtful insights John. Unlike most things on social media it made me think.

@jpodhoretz Great Post. How many will think clearly about it?