Let's talk about how to be supportive of friends or people you admire who are fucking the fuck up online, okay?

First of all, if you see someone you know and admire fucking up? Say something. Is it early in the fuck up and you're more comfortable DMing? Whatever. Just try to halt the fuck up.

You don't have to teach them a whole lesson or anything. You can say, "I'm not sure you're aware of how big you're fucking up right now and I would like to stop you from hurting others."

If you're not comfortable DMing, you can do the same thing in the replies.

One thing you can't actually do is force someone to listen, though.

So, let's say this person you really like and admire is fucking up and you see it on your TL and people are already saying, hey, you're fucking up. But the person is not listening. They are doubling down, tripling down, they are KFCing this all to hell.

What do you do then?

You step into those replies and you tell the person, "Take a break. You're being defensive and you probably feel attacked, but trust me, walk away. You're not gonna feel good about this when you figure out you're actually wrong."

So, let's say they still don't listen and they just keep rolling down the fail hill like a Katamari made of rusty nails and their mentions are STILL a nightmare because now the original offender's friends are arguing in there too.

Start calling THEM out.

But what if your friend apologizes eventually? They tweet, wow, I really fucked up and I'm sorry about it, I'm going to work to make it better, etc.

This is the part where YOU DO NOT PAT THEM ON THE BACK FOR THE APOLOGY.

Now, I'm not talking about when you correct someone and they're horrified and right away are like, oh, damn, I'm never going do that again, thanks for the heads up. You don't have to roast a person alive in that situation, it took all of two tweets or some shit.

But right now, an author I really like as a person is off Twitter for a while because he went full white man and violated people's boundaries and became hugely defensive about it. Now, he posted an apology and people are tripping over themselves to congratulate him.

Nah, he was racist, he didn't listen, he violated boundaries, he made people uncomfortable, apologizing is what he's SUPPOSED TO DO.

The last time you rear-ended someone's car, did they give you flowers and balloons for trading insurance information?

And it's not as helpful to the person as you think; if they respond to those comments in a positive way, it proves the apology was meaningless. If they don't respond at all, it looks like they're silently accepting support for their bad actions.

Even if the fucker upper came back and said, "Please don't thank me, it's what I'm supposed to do," it's still gonna keep the whole thing going. It's going to invite more people in to rehash the whole thing and hurt people all over again.

And I feel like we do that with people we like and admire because we think wow, I still like this person or their work and I can't be friends with someone or consume someone's work if they aren't of unimpeachable character all day, every day, from the moment they're born.

That's bullshit. Because you know, I think the shit Andrew did was so fucking mean and rude and he should have known better than to treat people like that. That's something someone should know about themselves!

I've always said that someone could try to "gotcha!" me with my super racist and conservative past and the only thing I'd ever be able to say is, "Yeah, I was a crappy person." Because you can't UNDO bad actions you caused by learning or listening or whatever.

And you can't avoid doing something again if the limit of your responsibility ends with a few apology tweets and then never thinking about it or being reminded of it again.

Good friends do that shit. People who care about people do the reminding and the calling out.

And if you think I'm talking out my ass, let me tell you, Mr.Jen has never let me forget my racist conservative days. "Remember when you called that liquor store--"
Yes, I remember that and I hope he doesn't let me forget it because that's what friends do.