Friday, May 08, 2009

I wonder if Twitter makes people more likely to give others the benefit of the doubt

I've heard before people theorizing that twitter and texting make people rude because messages must necessarily be so terse.

I'm wondering if the opposite might be true - I wonder if extensive use of twitter and/or texting will make people more likely to give others the benefit of the doubt.

When you receive an ambiguous message on twitter, you practically have to assume the sender's intentions are benign specifically because of the restrictions of the medium. The whole thing would have imploded by now if people didn't. So I wonder if a person who is accustomed to that medium will be more likely to give people IRL the benefit of the doubt on statements that could be ambiguous.

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