Thread by @fireh9lly

Just to remind everyone that if they see someone continually using tortured and repetitive social justice jargon to explain why they don't have to provide any evidence why a person is absolutely evil, what they are doing is a harassment campaign and they should be blocked

It's easy to fall for because we all want to be good people but if someone is irredeemably awful, there should be at least some strong anecdotes about their behaviour rather than "I told you that this person is (whatever it is)ist and you are gaslighting by not listening to me"

By the way this is a form of harassment that is generally used by someone who is from a marginalised group themselves, punching horizontally at someone from another marginalised group

Another tell is that the person who is running the harassment campaign virtually never tweets about other things than 1) how evil their victim of the week is, 2) siccing followers on the victim, and 3) talking about how great/sacrificing a person they are for identifying bad guys

The social justice jargon is just jargon and it's intended to terminate thought. It isn't applied with any reference to real contexts and instead as a kind of gotcha. e.g.

"You are transphobic."
"What did I do that was transphobic?"
"You know what you did. Stop gaslighting."

(a plausible conversation where someone is accused of gaslighting over transphobia would be more like: "dude give it up, we have multiple screenshots of you telling your GF that you're trying to save her from her harassers, and we have evidence it was you who dropped the dox")

(you know. Something concrete that uses the word like it would normally be used.)

Another tell is an all-or-nothing approach which gives absolutely no get-out for victims, often by blaming someone for the bad actions of someone else they interact with online. (This is part of the strategy because it intimidates people into cutting contact with the victim)

Good faith callouts often leave room for interpretation, or at least tolerance for the fooled - "I know he seems like a sweet guy, a lot of us were taken in by his charm, but you need to stop following this serial sexual predator!"

Bad faith callouts just have rage and contempt which is intended to scare. "To be clear: anyone claiming they are a feminist while following [user] is your enemy. Them and all of their supporters should be nailed on spikes, do not reply"

Another tell is that all of the fallout minions sicced on the victim are pre-armed with stories about how great the harasser is which they likely believe, usually based around the idea the harasser's haters are doing it based on fallacies.

"[user] spends her whole life fending off TERFs and Nazis who say she's racist against white people and cisnormative for signal boosting a PoC trans woman trying to get facial surgery. That's how I know you're a TERF and a Nazi."

Good faith defences of a user tend to contain LESS information, more along the lines of "[user] hasn't done anything!" or "before you carry on, you know [user] has had awful lies spread about them by Nazis, right?"

Harassers need a plausible story to cover up criticisms of their behaviour and so it is repeatedly told to reinforce it for their followers. Wrongfully accused people don't usually need to rehearse how right they are, and just try to defend themselves and get on with their lives

(Another tell is that the harassers are always 1) bogeymen 2) using social justice themed but obviously fallacious smears ("alt-right accusing her of racism against whites"). It's never passed off as a simple bullying campaign from a gaggle of jerks, which is most harassment.)

(the story is also not specific, and has a whiff of social justice, because the lie needs to be there to justify why GOOD PEOPLE might think someone is scum. Not "4chan assholes smeared her as a prostitute", no "Nazis sent her a letter saying they would murder her dog", etc)

(and since when do Nazis, transphobes, white supremacists, KWF powerusers etc CARE about how many socjus failings someone has? Bigots do not THINK like that. They attack people for being marginalised and think it is funny to do.)

Another giveaway is the harasser's page usually contains actual orders to their followers to go and deal with a specific person... but usually excused as the person being too cool/marginalised/fatigued from being such a good activist to do it themselves

People who have been knee deep in internet bullshit and no longer want to fight don't fight! They block people and report them, they tell their friends to leave them out of the conflict and not tag them in, they might lock or remake their account

If a person is insisting they don't like fighting, it gives them pain & anxiety, and yet they still don't stop posting screenshots of people getting mad at them (for their behaviour) with veiled threats like "let him know what we think of this", they actually do like fighting

Another giveaway is that there is nothing the victim can do to defend themselves and any attempt to do so is a crime. In genuine callouts, the victim making an apology will be squabbled over whether or not it is genuine, but it will be recognised as an attempt to deescalate.

In harassment an apology from the victim will be instead treated as an attempt to escalate, often by tortured logic. "She said she was sorry for what she did to further humiliate me in front of her adoring simps who now think she's so perfect. She should be shot."

(this is a good place for the social justice language to appear as well - e.g. a white trans woman trying to apologise for hurt she didn't realise she caused and saying it makes her feel terrible might get accused of using "white women's tears")

If a victim responds by not playing the game and just quietly blocking everyone, that's seen as admission of guilt, and used to encourage further harassment ("lol he blocked me. He thinks we'll leave him alone but we all remember who he is. Anyone know where he works?")

If a victim responds by being confused and asking genuine questions, that is escalation ("gaslighting", "an act", "DARVO tactics"). If they get angry, that will be shared as proof of their bad moral character until the end of time.

If the victim responds by trying to befriend the harassers or smooth things out between them, they might get accused of sexual harassment. Basically there is no option that is considered de-escalation by the harassment ringleader.

It's important to know that harassment ringleaders often know on some level they are doing something wrong, and have to work up the justification, which they slowly convince THEMSELVES of as well as others as they run campaigns. That's why they are so good at it - they believe!

And victims of this are not usually perfect people. Sometimes a legitimate callout falls to a harassment campaign after the person apologises - the people who are genuinely angry leave them alone, leaving only the vultures for whom no apology feels as good as being a bully feels

Ask yourself if the campaign is proportionate to any offense? Is the offense something better explained by youthful stupidity or someone making a take they didn't properly think about rather than proof of a hidden deep intractable evil?

Is it just PRACTICAL, going to make the world better in any way, by joining in dogpiling a disabled woman whose feed is her begging for food money, because she called Squall Leonhart from Final Fantasy VIII a "snacc" (therefore sexualising a minor)? Does it protect anybody?

Three entire people have DMed me asking "is this about [user whose feed exactly fits the profile of the harasser in this thread]" and none of them have been right. Where are these people learning how to do this?

Gonna accept this callout on the white women's tears example. Sorry for the misfire, don't go around quoting that tweet as advice.

https://twitter.com/hexandhammers/status/1334871966868795392?s=19

Also don't look for just one tell in this thread - some of them are less revealing than others and show up in legitimate situations. (e.g. very strong condemnatory takes about a certain account can be appropriate if the person does nothing but post racist shit all day!)

But usually in a situation like this, there will be actual clear evidence. In harassment, simply asking for evidence is taken as proof of bad faith, of not listening to victims, of the threat of friends cutting you off and treating you the way they treat their victim.

"you are not a feminist if you follow A Woman's Place" is very different to "you are not a feminist if you follow Twitter user ElephantBumBag, who made this tweet calling a male anime character a slut, and don't fucking ask me to do the work of looking for more evidence"