Month: May 2020

Toxic Online Behavior

This article discusses a specific series of tweets with a specific person. She attacked me, unprovoked, and her followers “liked” her comments. I respond by blocking, because such behavior should not be supported. But conclude as well that excessive time on Twitter is not healthy for individuals or society.

It is possible that someone may have followed a link back to me after an exchange in which I deleted my tweets because the person I had addressed was sensationally rude. Lest anyone be mistaken, I did not delete my tweets out of any feeling that they were wrong or misplaced in any way. On the contrary, they were, as almost all of my tweets are, compassionate and considered. The mistake I made was in posting them to the person I addressed. I removed them to eliminate the chance that anyone would follow my tweets to her site. She has a Patreon account that I choose not to support in that, or any, way.

Here’s What Happened

This was not a “cat fight.” It was five tweets.

She wrote a tweet ruminating about how the nuclear family structure empowers child molestation. I responded with words to the effect of “yes, but what can you do about that?” She responded by saying what she had done was stop talking to most of her family because a family member had been accused of the crime.

I noted that this happens often in families, where people take sides, and most often the accuser is the one shunned by the rest of the family. I said that “if this is you, you have my sympathy.”

Apparently she thought I assumed she was the victim (I had not, hence the word “if”) and found that annoying and somehow morally repugnant. She said although I had followed her only a few days earlier (true, and she followed back), I had not “minded my business once since then.”

By the time I saw her response, a few minutes after she’d posted it, six or eight people had already “liked” it. Did they read it? Did they have time to read it? To read my responses that had set off the tirade? To judge anything about the situation? Not likely.

Whose Business is it?

If you publish a tweet on Twitter, you are making a public comment. In my opinion, that makes whatever you say fair game. It is not YOUR business anymore, it’s public discussion. If you publish that comment as part of a multi-tweet conversation with someone who follows you and you follow back, that makes it a part of a personal discussion as well, and makes the discussion you’re having their business as well as yours in addition to being public. Isn’t this obvious? So aside from my purely (and obviously) compassionate intentions, my comment was not a mere meddling intrusion. My second tweet was responding to a comment specifically addressed to me.

Anybody charging money for her analysis and writing should be able to see this. Anybody with 30,000 followers using a public forum as a means of advertising that Patreon account should be keenly aware of the public nature of her comments.

What “Assumption?”

Moreover, I had NOT assumed she was the victim of the molestation. Her language was evasive and obscure on what exactly had happened, and I didn’t know whether she was the victim, sided with the victim, or sided with the accused. I know several people who were victims, however, and their families have punished them severely for bringing the culprit’s behavior to their attention. I consider this cruel and unjust and offered that “if” this were the person’s situation I could sympathize. That’s what brought on the attack.

Maybe she sides with the accused, after all. For the record, I know that an unjust accusation is also cruel, and I won’t dispute that they sometimes happen. The police are not allowed to use hypnosis to “retrieve” testimony because of the possibility of suggestion, and perhaps there are situations where children fabricate stories of molestation. My guess is, very rarely, but if it happens it’s bound to be destructive to the family and the accused. My reading of the tone of the tweet, however, was she was either victim or took the victim’s side.

I emphasize that the person originally tweeting is a professional writer. She charges money for her analysis and words and uses her platform to send people to her Patreon site. And she asks people to become “patrons.” She could have made herself clear but instead left the import of her words ambiguous. Was the whole thing a marketing trap into which I unwittingly fell? Possibly, although I doubt it. If so, it was obviously reprehensible. It was probably just a mistake: her careless writing, followed by a careless reading of my distinctly careful comment.

First Conclusion

My first conclusion, bringing on the deletion of my comments, was that the person involved should not be encouraged. Her writing should not be supported. Her analysis of what I wrote and did was shoddy, and her response to a compassionate tweet was shabby. I want no part in advertising her work or giving her a platform for further cheap and unjustified attacks. I make my position known here for the few, if any, who will care. If she has any desire to respond to what I’ve said she can do it on her time line (where I will not read it) or she can DM me (where I will read it).

If the rest of her analysis and writing are no better than what she demonstrated to me, it isn’t worth paying for. Perhaps I’m wrong, or perhaps she was just having a bad day. I’m willing to let the market decide, but she lost my support.

Second Conclusion

My second conclusion goes to Twitter itself and comes from the described interaction as well as my observation of many others. The platform rewards sensationalism over substance and encourages the worst forms of tribalism. The fact that so many people “liked” her completely unfounded comments without having had time to read, much less to judge, them or the tweets to which they responded says it all, doesn’t it? We all know this is the way it works, and we all know that people will shun or cancel others based on a single tweet.

People who manipulate and use that unfortunate reality about Twitter are not the type of people with whom I choose to associate. That was another reason to block the account I’ve been discussing, for she is one who does that.

More fundamentally, though, spending too much time on the social media encourages a warped and unforgiving view of human interaction. In real life, you constantly encounter people who have a whole life different than yours of which you have only the vaguest ideas. You transact business with people with radically different opinions than your own because you have to.

The fact that the person behind the cash register may vote for Trump or speak Spanish at home does not matter when you’re buying groceries, and maybe not when you’re asking for a date, either. That’s because at first you have a limited transaction, and later you see a more entire person. This gradual unveiling and conditional acceptance of others is what real social life is. It allows common sense and compassion, not to mention animal attraction and a host of other factors, to play their appropriate roles.

Instant acceptance or rejection based on practically nothing is not social life in any traditional way. It is excessively easy to manipulate because it strips out the real-life common sense that guides us to be careful in forming judgments about other people. People using common sense about things they know are hard to manipulate and control. People interacting with one another in a limited forum so they are discussing abstract theories or policies are, by contrast, much easier to manipulate.

I need to spend less time on the social media. Probably we all do.

Spiritual Strength

I do an exercise called the “candle exercise,” which a lot of people seem to know about, but not to appreciate very much. The exercise consists simply of lighting a candle and looking at it for some period of time – two minutes, usually, to start. During this time, you look at the candle and try not to think any thoughts. This is generally impossible, so you learn first not to hold on to any thoughts, to let them flow, unattached, through your mind.

It requires effort. And relaxation. And it builds your ability to concentrate and control your mind: spiritual strength. You could spend 15 minutes a day for the rest of your life and not be wasting time.

Spiritual strength is undervalued in our society. It is the core of any intellectual undertaking that requires serious effort, and it is the core of any physical effort that requires endurance. If you’ve done any serious athletic activity, you know this is true: concentration is essential. If your mind starts wandering, you don’t perform as well, and the thought that you might give up finds its way into your thoughts. Slowing down or walking start looking good if you’re running, or resting in some other way if you’re doing something else.

I am fasting a few days this week and have, at this point, missed several meals. You might think that would reduce your strength or energy, but this appears not to be true. I have run and cycled all three days in which I’ve been fasting, and if anything, my energy level is higher than usual. I was very strong on the hills yesterday and today, and today I almost added another 10 kilometers to my ride (of about 30 – i.e., 20 miles). I decided not to do that because I didn’t want to be tired tomorrow, but I could have done it.

I’ve heard people say fasting increased endurance and have heard different reasons for that. I guess mine is the most fru-fru of all. I think that by the time you’ve gone 24 hours without food on a fast, you feel stronger. You’ve conquered some appetite and sublimated it to the greater goal. It builds your ability to take other challenges.