since im supposed to be writing, im going to do this instead

the difference between criticism & harassment: not all negative content is the same https://twitter.com/browofjustice/status/1354863191616962561

first, what makes a critic?

having a platform. this can be a blog, a medium listing, a patreon, an instagram, twitter, or even goodreads

the next part is having an opinion. (what kind doesn't matter) it can be awful and terrible and *wrong* but that's...fine

it's their space

then using their platform, twitter or whatever, to state their opinion

they can discuss it ad nauseum. they can talk about their feelings. it's their space

(the unfortunate thing here is that space on social media tends to drift and overlap into other spaces)

but their criticism remains their own, and other people can interact with it, saying "that's it, that's the tweet" or saying "your opinion sucks rocks" which, sure

all of this is fine

it is the nature of social media

harassment is ... something else. so here is a list of what crosses the line between criticism & harassment (not exhaustive)

caveat: not all of these are harassment on their own, but the more boxes you check, the more likely it is

1)

if you dig through someone's social media, searching for incriminating material, which you then post to your own platform

2)

if you incite people to spam or dogpile someone else's platform

3)

if you spread the personal contact information of someone, hoping to influence other people to interact negatively with this person during the course of their day-to-day lives

4)

if you focus on another person, talking about them &/or to them incessantly, despite the fact the two of you are not friends and don't have a relationship

5)

if you create multiple accounts to further your own opinion about someone

6)

if you habitually override boundaries the other person has established in order to gain access to their platform or to their person

7)

if you scrape someone's account or private information in order to use their own information against them

8)

if you take details of the worst part of someone's life: the death of a family member, contracting a serious illness, etc. and use that information to leverage yourself into their day-to-day existence

of course, as i said, not all of these will qualify for harassment on their own, but there is a common theme: leaving your own space to aggressively invade someone else's

if you are exploring someone's personal life because the two of you disagreed about something, you're harassing them

on the subject of anonymity

this is the privilege of the internet. we are on our phones and computers, engaging in a space separate from our day-to-day lives

if you're creating a hostile zone for other people, you're not a critic, you're a harasser

whether you are anonymous or not

disliking someone isn't harassment. disliking someone's writing isn't harassment. being critical of someone's motives isn't harassment.

you aren't a victim of prosecution because someone is critical of your work.

and anonymity isn't the same as privacy

im anonymous online, but this doesn't mean i do not also have a car or a home or voter's registration

even people who use their full legal names online don't expect for someone to search records of their dead relatives and use those records to discover where they live

if i say something ridiculous online, i expect to be called out for it here, not on my cell phone by a complete stranger

now, im not saying that there should never be real-life consequences for online behaviors.

when people have a platform and they use it to engage in racist acts, or commit treason, or deliver rape threats etc. they can and should face the consequences.

this is not the same as saying "hey, this shit you wrote sucks and i hate you" then discovering someone scraped your account for details about your rare disease and leveraged those details into your university class schedule and called your dean of admissions

the scope of it matters, and consequences don't fall evenly across everyone

now, as someone who has been stalked, and who tried and tried to prove it, was unsuccessful, and had to almost die, attacked by the person who stalked me, before the police would take me seriously, i understand why someone would be anonymous online

i would prefer if the person who tried to kill me was not able to simply google my name and find my address, coming back to finish the job

and that's another type of real-life consequence that posting someone's personal information can cause

which is why hosting a class teaching people how to search private records and discover a person's private information carries a stiff price, even if they are not the person who winds up paying it

exposing someone else to a very real threat of death is a bad thing to do, even if you rationalize it to yourself that it's all public information anyway, and "besides, they said a mean thing about me, they harassed me online by *subtweeting* me"

there was a guy on here not too long ago who called a few of us his enemies and said "this is what i do to enemies" then posted a picture of himself with a rifle

this guy went on fox news and talked about being harassed by us online

our harassment? telling him he was wrong about something that had made him very popular

so...none of this is new.

it's just gross, and unprofessional, and could result in someone else being really hurt.

reconsider.