Thread by @TheCheekyGinger, I've been thinking for a while about the ways in which Twitter [...]

I've been thinking for a while about the ways in which Twitter is both ephemeral and permanent and how that can be manipulated and used as a weapon against people of good intent.

1/13

I have a niece and nephew, both young adults now, who had a contentious relationship as children. (Stay with me; this is related, I promise.) This is how that would play out.

Her: <pokes, irritates, annoys him repeatedly>

(I know some of y'all know where this is going)

2/13

Him: STOP!

Her: <poke, poke, poke>

Him: STOP!

Her: <annoy annoy>

Him: <blows up, usually physically>

Parents: HEY, leave your sister alone! You're in trouble!!

Him: But—

Parents: NO BUTS. Go to your room!

3/13

His parents usually saw him as the aggressor. Was that fair? Not entirely. On the other hand, although his frustration was understandable, he couldn't be allowed to blow up like that. Often he overreacted. The cycle was unhealthy.

How does that relate to Twitter? Well ...

4/13

There are a few categories of people #onhere who love to start shit. Bernouts and trolls that play both sides, mostly. (MAGATs are too dim to start much of anything.)

They poke and poke and poke. Their objective is to provoke, not just a reaction, but an outsized reaction.

5/13

To that end, they will keep pushing until the conversation devolves into what looks like an equal argument, at which point they will suddenly start acting "reasonable."

Twitter being Twitter, as the conversation goes on, it gathers spectators.

6/13

What has happened is only clear to those involved from the beginning. To most of those spectators, the whole scene is at best confusing. Many of them will believe that the few tweets they see tell the whole story. Some will be buddies of the first fucker. And very few ...

7/13

Very few will have the time or inclination to go back through a days-long Twitter thread with multiple branches to piece together who started it. Nor is it reasonable to expect them to do so.

Twitter moves fast. We all follow hundreds of people. It is ephemeral.

8/13

So in the end, what happens is that reporting is weaponized, screen caps of your worst tweets are made and saved and circulated to make you and possibly your whole group look bad, and potential allies are turned off by the mess.

And "right" makes no difference at all.

9/13

Everybody involved in this is grown, so I'm not here to tell people what to do. I'm just talking about what I see and how I do.

Because I *know* I have a temper. I KNOW I can be baited. So to avoid all that, I block. I block early and often. Blockity-block-block.

10/13

Often, I drop a comment, THEN block. Satisfying. None of us owes anyone an audience. We owe less than zero to people trying to start shit.

A pleasant side effect of all that aggressive blockery, by the way, is that I don't get a whole lot of harassment.

11/13

Anyway, I try (and regularly fail, which if you follow me, you'll know) to manage my own mental health around Twitter use as well as positively promote what I believe in while calling out assholes in an appropriately pointed and pithy (bc this IS Twitter) manner.

12/13

My quickness to anger and the hell we live in make it hard to not just start swinging, but in spite of my worst instincts, I'm trying to follow the lead of people I admire and play the long game.

Refusal to engage at length is one of the best tools I have.

13/13

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