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Dr. Flowers, Shinigami Arc Profile picture
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Nov 5 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I will sooner lock my account than be driven off Twotter by a bunch of tech-bro assholes, racists, and their chucklefuck billionaire idol.

We've ceded enough social spaces to these assholes and I refuse to cede one more.
That said, I do not begrudge anyone their departure. I'm mirroring my content (imperfectly) over at mastodon. However, I won't abandon this place until it becomes actively dangerous to me and people I care about.
This is a massive privilege on my part, to be sure. I've already seen some wonderful trans and disabled people I've followed almost since I got here depart out of an abundance of caution, and that's depressing.
It's depressing because this shitheel billionaire has made this place so potentially dangerous that good people are leaving before he does anything like change moderation policies or open the floodgates to those banished from the site.
It's depressing because there are so many communities that relied upon twitter's infrastructure to make their needs known. For example, #cripthevote would not be possible without he affordances of twitter.
So yeah, fuck these racist assclowns. You'll have to ban my ass to get me off this hellsite.

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More from @shengokai

Dr. Flowers, Shinigami Arc Profile picture
Nov 5
In case it was not clear from my tweets over the last two days “do not cede the forum to bigots” is not just instructions for twitter, it is instructions for my discipline.

Specifically, do not cede the field of philosophy to the bigots, the transphobes, the eugenicists.
Do not let their scholarship pass unchallenged, do not let their assumptions go without critique, do not let them “just ask questions,” do not cede the fucking discipline to these bigots whatever you might think of their scholarship or standing in the field.
I don’t care if they’re a TT faculty member at an R1 or the equivalent and have been a regular fixture in texts for a decade, you do not cede the discipline to their bigotry. You do not let their academic standing excuse their bullshit.
Read 4 tweets
Dr. Flowers, Shinigami Arc Profile picture
Nov 5
That’s actually something I was worried about and worth the quote tweet. The exodus to a new platform that seems superficially similar but does not have the same affordances as twitter is a fundamentally unsustainable method because they are fundamentally different platforms.
But there’s a massive social cost here, too. Our networks on twitter are fragile. I’m not talking about “black twitter,” black twitter will clown the racists and trolls, will tear them up in the quote tweets and replies, and will generally endure because we’ve survived worse.
(Again, @DocDre and @KishonnaGray are experts here, they’ve written books on this which are regular features in my tech courses)
Read 10 tweets
Dr. Flowers, Shinigami Arc Profile picture
Nov 5
This is true, but we can go back to the same tactics and strategies that we used on twitter prior to their content moderation and policing improvements. Moreover, I’m not exactly the right person to hand out strategies: you need to talk to sex workers, for example.
I mention sex workers because they’ve been through this on every platform. @hackinghustling, for example, has a lot of research on how this sort of thing happens across platforms, as does @ZahraStardust most of which can provide valuable insight into what comes next.
Other things we can do is use the site as intended. Lock your accounts and maintain circulation within your group of followers. This might mitigate some of the trolls and assholes. Use the circles and the communities features. Screenshot bad actors instead of retweeting.
Read 5 tweets
Dr. Flowers, Shinigami Arc Profile picture
Nov 5
But also, the unique nature of this bird app and how it allows communities to form is why we need to fight for it. I’m dead fucking serious about this. To surrender twitter to the trolls teaches them that they can drive people out of any space they want.
And I get why people who are under massive threat will leave, that’s understandable. The rest of us, though, should stay and fight over this bird app because of the cultural treatment of it as a public square, an open forum.

You never cede the forum to the bigots. NEVER.
And it really doesn’t matter if Twitter really is a public square (it isn’t) what matters is the cultural understanding of Twitter as a public forum. The libidinous (thanks @DocDre) structure that allows it to feel like one.
Read 5 tweets
Dr. Flowers, Shinigami Arc Profile picture
Nov 5
Okay, check this out:

"Theory can start with and from acknowledged works of art only when the esthetic is already compartmentalized, or only when works of art are set in a niche apart instead of being celebrations, recognized as such, of the things of ordinary experience."
This is from Dewey's "Art as Experience." So, what Dewey says about Art Theory also applies to Science and other kinds of theoretical disciplines. Put simply, theory can only start from acknowledged elements of experience when that experience is compartmentalized.
That is, on Dewey's view, most theoretical approaches isolate the object of theory from the environing experiential contexts such that the object is elevated out of its role in experience, what it does for an experiencer, and how it shapes their transactions with the world.
Read 15 tweets
Dr. Flowers, Shinigami Arc Profile picture
Nov 4
Gonna double down on this as a political rule going forward: a great many people have demonstrated over the past four or so years that they do not want to be taught, that they are unwilling to be taught, that they simply do not care to be taught about the harms their evil does.
Because they have demonstrated this in everything from legislation to punditry to cultural products and phenomena, pedagogy (and reasoned argument) is not the appropriate response.

You need to restrain their capacity to do harm.
Every revolutionary I've studied from King Jr. to Freire, to Lorde, to X, has said this. King Jr. is FAMOUS for this, but everyone likes to ignore it.

When moral persuasion and reasoned argument fail, you need to restrain the capacity to do evil, to do violence.
Read 4 tweets

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