Toward the end of the most recent episode of John Roderick’s 5by5 podcast Road Work (“Lipstick Brown,” episode #115), Dan Benjamin articulates a compelling if not altogether convicing argument that humans are not well-suited for realtime global-scale social media; speaking mostly about Twitter and how he attempts to cope with the stress it encourages upon its users. Some of the social science alluded to is sketchy stuff at best, but the emotional experiences he shares are certainly real and echoed by many.

Anyways, there are interesting implications of arguments of this sort. In particular, it would to some extent absolve Jack Dorsey of not fixing Twitter attempts to do so being rather Sisyphean. Though even if it can’t be perfect, I do think Twitter could be a lot better and wouldn’t want to let anyone running a multi-billion dollar company off the hook so easily.