Thread by @TerrinaMajnoona

As we all are aware & no one needs to be told, the internet & social media provide the opportunity for the worst bullies to say the worst things they can with relative impunity and generally few if any ever adverse consequences. Its just how it is, its physically possible for >

anyone to type anything that goes online and so it occurs. When I first got on twitter I would routinely quote tweet racist or offensive replies i got or tweets I saw with the typical "look at this terrible thing" that I think is a pretty natural & understandable response >

and usually results in what we're hoping for, that being decent ppl to confront the person who tweeted it and tell them what a piece of shit they are & so forth. Nothing wrong with any of it and I think its natural if you're not a terrible person to want to trust in the power>

of good ppl to not let bad ppl be shitty without being told they are shitty. But the longer I've watched this the more I've realized that in most cases, doing that is just providing a larger audience & more exposure for these really abusive messages and probably is a net >

negative for what ppl are hoping for when they quote tweeted it. It makes no difference to the OP that their tweet is being RTd with a "look how terrible this is" message attached, the point was to say something awful and reach as many of us as possible.

They aren't bothered by the negative responses, its what they anticipated and they're just glad more ppl saw what they posted. Often they only reach as large an audience as they do because we quote tweeted them & said "look how terrible this is"

As less personally satisfying as it may be at least 90% of the time the best thing is certainly to just block (report first, if you're so inclined). Theres some times i can see specific reasons to circulate something like that but most of the time theres no value beyond our>

temporary satisfaction in seeing ppl "pile on" someone who deserves it. But they don't care what we think & now we just helped them get their filth to more ppl to see & be affected by.

One thing I've noticed, when I've been occasionally "swarmed" by a bunch of these kinds of accounts, is that by far im clear of them much much faster when I've muted the bulk of them, replied *only once* to q few & not with a quote tweet, and only if i have a pretty good >

"one liner" I can zing them back with that hopefully makes their comment look kinda stupid & always im breezy like they're not really bothering me all that much, then I mute. So I'm not even tempted to respond.

They usually all disappear pretty quickly then

Because I mute so much, I cant tell you how many times I'm searching my old tweets & find these random offensive responses I never even saw lol. But because the urge to respond always dissipates with time I realize I was better off for never seeing it

This gets to a larger beef i have with the online "left" and the irl "left" being primarily reactive and never looking to be proactive and often apparently unintentionally helping the "right" with a number of tasks, disseminating messaging being the biggest one.

We are all very familiar now with what kinds of awful things ppl can say. If there's some new thing theyre doing lol it may warrant being brought to others' attention. But if there's no value beyond wanting ppl to condemn it we should probably think twice.

Pretty sure I started coming to these conclusions during some pivotal moment of "crisis" for Palestine & Zionist accounts were activated in large numbers & on here swarming with just anything they could say & it may have been Ali Abunimah & his #IronThumb that got me thinking>

more about how its counterproductive to give any of your time or space to "condemn" this stuff.

Some ppl spend a lot of time on here showing everyone all the abuse they receive. Everyone understandably responds to condemn it. A lot of other ppl receive pretty awful abuse & you don't even know about it because they quietly mute/block & dont help the ppl tweeting abuse by >

showing it to a wider audience. Cant help but think this is a much stronger response.