Matt K. Lewis is a respected American journalist, who has been cited or quoted by several major outlets, including New York Magazine, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

In his new column published on The Week, he describes why he thinks Twitter has gone from being a visionary social sharing tool in the past, to a virtual prison today.

In Why I Hate Twitter, Lewis starts out by providing a background of how he first got involved with Twitter. He also looks at the many benefits Twitter provides, such as instant news, being able to become your own PR coordinator, and making millions of new friends and connections globally.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment it happened — but at some point, Twitter became a dark place. It’s a lot like the transformation of the 1960s. It started out being about free love, sharing ideas, and changing the world, but somehow we ended up being more about Altamont and Charles Manson. Somewhere along the line, our optimism faded.

One of Lewis’ main problems with the social network is that the more people started to join, the more they brought with them more and more unsavoury elements.

According to the journalist, while the early Twitter adopters might have been “tech-utopians”, the succeeding waves consist of “angry cynics and partisan cranks” who use the technology to make the world even louder and worse than it was before Twitter

Twitter has become like high school, where the mean kids say something hurtful to boost their self-esteem and to see if others will laugh and join in. Aside from trolling for victims after some tragedy, Twitter isn’t used for reporting much anymore. But it is used for snark.

Lewis ends the piece off with a prediction that more and more credible people will start to leave Twitter, and look for a new appropriate social media plaform.

Just as I was once an evangelist for Twitter, I’ve had a conversion. I’ve repented. I’ve reformed.

The full column can be read here.

[Source: The Week]