Innocent Fun, or Spiteful Echo Chamber?

Ahh Medtwitter – just like a toxic ex I keep coming back to you, even though I know you’ll upset me.

My day always starts the same nowadays – wake up, pop the kettle on, sit down and have some breakfast whilst mindlessly scrolling through Twitter. See at first the algorithm gave me cool people, funny tweets, and the occasional cute pet. These days it’s just arguments, opinions and sadness. For the uninitiated, Medtwitter is the corner of Twitter (or X, whatever Elon wants us calling it nowadays) where Medics, Healthcare Professionals, and just general ne’er-do-wells come to spout their loves, their hates, their work, their hobbies, and just about everything in between.

I love social media as much as the next person, and they all have their own issues (I’m never more vain than when I’ve just posted on my Instagram) but there is something deeply troubling about MedTwitter whenever I log on. All I seem to see nowadays is the usual culprits spouting Anti-PA, Anti-GMC, Anti-Apprentices, Anti-anything rhetoric, and then the typical responses from the Anti-Anti-PA crowd come in and tell them off, only to be countered by the Anti-Anti-Anti crowd… God it’s exhausting.

This doesn’t mean that I’m not anti any of the above, and you can make some very exhaustive and nuanced arguments about many of those issues, but honestly - how much nuance can you really fit into 280 characters? And even if you could, would anyone see it?

Let’s do a physical demonstration – which caught your eye first when you first glanced at the page?

The unfortunate truth is that Twitter is the way it is because it needs to promote discourse, and that is now extending into the Medical Sphere. Tweets on the more harmful end of extreme get more engagement, more views, and keep people using Twitter. Anecdotally, more and more people are using Twitter as their main source of information, referencing it as fact, as if Harvard Referencing now has a ‘Tweet’ mode. It’s dangerous, and a worrying sign that this discourse that was typically confined to the walls of your mobile phone, is now seeping into the real world.

I’m not saying don’t use Twitter – being the hypocritical guy that I am I’ll go back to my morning routine tomorrow morning and scroll with my cup of tea in hand. All I am saying is let’s be careful. There’s enough ‘Anti’ in the world, and without nuance we’ll all spend eternity screaming at each other in the void without getting anywhere. Like I’m your waiter delivering food to your table at Wetherspoons, I encourage you to find your own sources. Hey, at least it’s not Reddit?