Y'all, Twitter is dunking on a Helen Lewis article originally published under the title "There's Too Much Life in our Work Life Balance."
Most of the dunks are witty stuff like "Did a work write this"
But there's a catch and we need to talk about it.
Thread.
Most of the dunks are witty stuff like "Did a work write this"
But there's a catch and we need to talk about it.
Thread.
The catch: the article isn't about doing more work. It's about acknowledging the work that we currently categorize as "life."
In their effort to meme back at lean in culture, the Twitterati are falling into another harmful trope.
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In their effort to meme back at lean in culture, the Twitterati are falling into another harmful trope.
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A friend once succinctly observed: "Twitter is not a community." Because communities don't treat relationships as disposable.
On Twitter, people pile on because it's fun, and then wield this (sometimes super shaky) justification that they're sticking up for the little guy.
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On Twitter, people pile on because it's fun, and then wield this (sometimes super shaky) justification that they're sticking up for the little guy.
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It's systemic. The CEOs of the web's power centers mostly started out as nerds with delusions of grandeur and poor social skills, whose only social capital was the witty zinger. So that's what social media is built to foreground, and that's what internet culture values.
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Internet culture values the witty zinger at the expense, usually, of listening or thoughtful discussion. And in the serotonin-drenched chase for that Twitter High Score, otherwise thoughtful people forget to step back and check their sources.
It doesn't help...
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It doesn't help...
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That we have adopted a stigma against Shutting Up.
Yes, Mandela pointed out that neutrality in situations of injustice is tantamount to choosing the side of the oppressor. But I'm pretty sure he didn't mean "The last person to dunk this on Twitter is a rotten egg!"
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Yes, Mandela pointed out that neutrality in situations of injustice is tantamount to choosing the side of the oppressor. But I'm pretty sure he didn't mean "The last person to dunk this on Twitter is a rotten egg!"
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When we all collectively race to get our zinger out in time, a common outcome I see is this: someone whose career or body of work has CLEARLY advocated for one position gets accused of the OPPOSITE by a drove of strangers who has no idea who they are.
I think this is bad.
I think this is bad.
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This isn't defending the marginalized.
This isn't defending the marginalized.
It's not holding someone accountable for a pattern of behavior; it's wrongly accusing someone of a pattern of behavior based on a misinterpretation of one thing they said—or in this case, probably, that an editor said ABOUT what they said.
Because we got sucked into this...
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Because we got sucked into this...
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...zinger worship situation by the way the internet's social fabric is woven.
Like I said, it's not that people just suck. This is systemic. And I would love to see us reimagine internet culture and build systems that encourage a different kind of interaction online.
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Like I said, it's not that people just suck. This is systemic. And I would love to see us reimagine internet culture and build systems that encourage a different kind of interaction online.
9/9
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