No good comes out of posting at 3 a.m. Whether it’s a drunken photograph of your best friend struggling to find the toilet, or it’s a carefully-crafted counterpoint—within the confines of 140 characters—contributing to the most relevant argument of the day before, no good comes out of posting a Tweet, a Facebook monologue, a blog, anything at 3 a.m. It can wait.
According to Twitter, however, the accounts of Donald Trump and former Secretary Hillary Clinton are not only awake at 3 a.m., but are consciously aware of and updating their social media presence. After Trump predictably went to the Twitterverse for a typical rant after the first presidential debate, Clinton’s Twitter account decided to take a jab at Trump, tweeting at 3:20 a.m. about something that seemed quite out-of-place: national service. Yes, this is exactly what I expected of an “incredible” election cycle.
Whether the posts are written personally by the candidates themselves, or merely by their campaigns, doesn’t matter. Whether it is an emotional outburst or a productive yet literally untimely statement, whether it is written by a prepubescent teenager or by a cranky adult, whether it is smart or it is stupid, doesn’t matter. This ridiculous, non-stop online behavior must stop, on all ends. We all need to get some sleep.
The behavior doesn’t stem from our candidates; it’s been said that, though many of us refuse to accept it, these candidates reflect our choices, what we care about and how we choose to express and exert ourselves in 2016. Along with Trump, and partially Clinton—who takes to social media in a far more responsible manner than the Republican candidate—we are the reactionary, self-important users and abusers of social media. We say anything and everything that comes to mind, in an unfiltered stream of consciousness—or, rather, unconsciousness—to prove ourselves worthy of partaking in the conversation.
And “we” doesn’t limit itself to the oh-so-toxic millennial generation. Our parents, voters and nonvoters sit at the table next to the millennials, next to Trump and our politicians and all of the other over-sharers that pretentiously dominate our newsfeeds.
Those ever-looping, never-ending Facebook “discussions” initiated and reinitiated by the collective bored and dissatisfied “we” are—whether we choose to be or not—in the same lot with the posts of Anthony Weiner’s phallic failures and of David Duke’s dumbassery. The deleted tweets—never truly deleted—of the collective fiery and fearless-until-scared “we” are in the same company as the millions of deleted tweets by our politicians and the millions more by our favorite celebrities.
At 3 a.m., the possibility of striking genius while staring intently into the blinding light of your iPhone is impossible. And yet, we refuse to take our hands off of our keyboards, at the risk of missing something, even if what we’d miss is, really, nothing.
Because the idea of social media is not to spew out conversation-starters or tack onto the attacks of each other’s virtual speeches. The purpose of social media, the interconnected, interactive online world, is to somehow use our dialogue to effect development or action in the real world. Just because policy reform or revolution of thought might begin or be accelerated through social media doesn’t mean that it thrives there. It is our responsibility to take from social media what might improve actual circumstances or conversations between people, not to collectively argue in a head-spinning back-and-forth over the politics of Twitter.
Our best ideas cannot possibly be translated to a post. No ability of technology will ever cut the impact of developing our most meaningful conversations and ideas in the real world.
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to take a behind-the-scenes tour of Cameron Indoor Stadium, which included a peek into head coach Mike Krzyzewski’s personal office. It was exactly what might be expected of a basketball coach’s office: a television, playbooks, a stationary bike, as well as photographs upon photographs capturing the highlights of a prolific career. Everything felt in place except, scattered around the office, on Coach K’s desk, next to his exercise machine, atop his television, were several notepads with pens resting on top.
One of the Krzyzewski daughters, Debbie, who led the tour, explained that her father keeps notepads armed with pens at each location where he might spend a fair amount of time. They are put on his bedside, on the armrest of his living-room chair, on the team bench, next to his computer. Coach K never allows an idea to escape him, so he makes sure he is able to document anything that comes to him, wherever he is, whenever it might be, so he might think and act upon it in the future.
Coach K doesn’t post much, and yet many of us would take the access to those notepads over the access to just about anyone’s Twitter feed. That’s because when faced with a fleeting idea, rather than sharing something underdeveloped or recklessly incendiary to the public, Coach K chooses to reach for the privacy of his pen and paper, giving himself the opportunity to develop a fragment of genius into a real-life masterpiece, when he is able to.
We should all take a page out of his playbook. Rather than reaching out to the vacuum of social media for immediate validation or simply for the sake of an argument, we should first choose to confide to our collective pen and paper to, before we act, or text, or post, give ourselves the necessary time to think on our own; and then, if it’s 3 a.m., we should try to get some sleep.
Jackson Prince is a Trinity sophomore and editorial page editor. His column, “playing with fire,” runs on alternate Mondays.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.