To compare much of social media to a swamp, a sewer, a cesspool or an old-fashioned outhouse is to miss the point.
There is without question an offputting stink to all those entities, enough to discourage people from hanging around any longer than essential. But mere nature lacks something at which online communications excel: the malevolence, the cruelty, the bitterness, the truthlessness and the all-encompassing anger that typifies so much of what gets channelled into cyber discourse in the guise of discussion, commentary, debate, opinion or simple free speech.
