"I just want to ask questions, I don't know why you're so opposed to that," the anime avatar said, barely audible over the shitstorm of abuse his easily googleable question came in the middle of.

"I am a good and civil and reasonable person," he reassured himself.

"I don't know why you won't engage with me in good faith."

A mid-tier brigade might have a few hundred people each spending ten minutes being shitty to you in your mentions.

That works out to ~50 man-hours of abuse.

That's a week and overtime of getting shit flung at you.

Literally nobody's psyche is set up to handle that.

Hell, having one person be shitty to you can ruin your day; having ten goes beyond annoying into "let's sandblast my psyche."

Having a few thousand from [gamer-icon/right-wing-media-shitstirrer-of-choice] is withering. Especially the first time.

It's why they do it.

It's a relatively low-cost, relatively high-impact tactic, and it's done because it's disruptive and hard to fight.

You just have to weather it.

That's easier, if all you are is a persona you can pick up or put away whenever you want, like those anime avatars.

It gets harder and harder the more of "you" is actually existing online.

This twitter account is me; notifications go directly to me, that's my name and face on the handle, these are my opinions.

Given how little other socializing I get, given lockdown? Ugh.

I can't imagine how much worse it would be, if this account was ALSO my professional interaction with a community.

Particularly with Gamers.

I can't imagine how much worse it would be, if I was also something other than a masc cis white dude.

Particularly with Gamers.

Critical Bard got some /mountains/ of shit thrown at him the past few days, and he didn't deserve it.

So

a) #VerifyCriticalBard, because he needs the tools to fight this, and

b) do some reporting of the folks in his mentions.