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Ron Obvious

Ron Obvious's Journal
Ron Obvious's Journal
March 8, 2022

The New Silent Majority: People Who Don't Tweet

In real life, most people are basically kind and internet social media are distorting that reality, making us all sound stupid and belligerent. I suspected as much, really.

The rising power and prominence of the nation's loudest, meanest voices obscures what most of us personally experience: Most people are sane and generous -- and too busy to tweet. It turns out, you're right. We dug into the data and found that, in fact, most Americans are friendly, donate time or money, and would help you shovel your snow. They are busy, normal and mostly silent. These aren't the people with big Twitter followings or cable-news contracts -- and they don't try to pick fights at school board meetings. So the people who get the clicks and the coverage distort our true reality.

Three stats we find reassuring:

1. 75% of people in the U.S. never tweet.
2. On an average weeknight in January, just 1% of U.S. adults watched primetime Fox News (2.2 million). 0.5% tuned into MSNBC (1.15 million).
3. Nearly three times more Americans (56%) donated to charities during the pandemic than typically give money to politicians and parties (21%).

https://politics.slashdot.org/story/22/03/08/2139228/the-new-silent-majority-people-who-dont-tweet


Profile Information

Name: Ron
Gender: Male
Home country: Middle Earth
Current location: Seattle
Member since: Tue Dec 13, 2011, 11:37 PM
Number of posts: 6,261

About Ron Obvious

I got the nickname Ron Obvious because -- in addition to being a huge Python fan -- my name really is Ron and I used to start sentences with \"Obviously\" a lot. Obviously, that\'s no longer a problem.
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