I. Alex Said You’re Weird
I remember one of the first dumb things I ever said. I was walking around my school playground with a kid from my elementary school, probably somewhere around 8-10 years old. Another kid in my class had at one point told me this kid was weird so like any small child with a developing brain, I blurted out my thoughts without thinking.
“Alex said you’re weird.”
This luckily happened within earshot of a teacher who sussed out the situation, stormed up to me, and angrily told me that you don’t say things like that to people. I tried to explain that *I* did not feel that way, *Alex* felt that way. The teacher continued to explain that this didn’t make my statement less rude. So I apologized. We continued playing. I moved forward with new knowledge about how not to talk to people. End of story.
Now imagine if instead, the next day the teacher had approached me with an airhorn and said “oh you think you can still play here after what you did you little piece of shit??” and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how Twitter works.
II. The Cycle
So let’s talk about making offensive jokes online.
Twitter is massive. Unlike Facebook and Instagram with their more closed off friend loops and normalized private accounts, Twitter is more or less an open forum. Sure, there are lots of private accounts people use but to Join the Conversation, you have to put your thoughts out there for all to see. There are an estimated 330 million people actively using Twitter. There are communities full of sub-communities upon sub-communities. This is all to say: there are so, so many people you can make angry. Twitter is like a religion built around engagement and outrage is a byproduct we’re willing to risk to get closer to god.
It goes like this:
Someone makes an offensive joke.
The joke gets dunked on. An apology is demanded.
The author responds to criticism.
Regardless of their reaction, the author is harassed for an indeterminate amount of time
It’s a natural process, like an immune response. And in a lot of ways it’s necessary. Twitter is filled with horrible, hateful people and dunking on their bigoted takes is one of the only assertions of power we have in a broken system. Facilitating dunks on republican senators is what Twitter does best. I’ve made a couple ill-advised jokes in my twelve (jesus christ) years on Twitter. You won’t find them because I deleted them and now know what about them was offensive so that I can avoid making similar mistakes in the future. Those first three steps in the system are an important part of helping people learn what is and isn’t offensive while also keeping the legitimately hateful folks in check.
The step that’s become a problem is step four. Step four looks the same no matter what happened in step three. So often, when someone apologizes for a dumb joke, the internet’s response is to make sure that they never forget that they made a mistake. Until the internet finds a new gaffe to fixate on, you will be chained to yours. But if your downfall was high-profile enough or involved the right mixture of grudge-obsessed online personalities with big followings, some of those people never move on. Screenshots are forever, and you can expect to see them under every post you make until each and every one of your detractors is satisfied. And satisfaction never comes.
A single tweet apology? Too off-the-cuff, clearly you didn’t spent enough time thinking about what you’ve done. A descriptive Notes App apology? Self indulgent and decadent. We don’t need your life story! A boilerplate apology without frills? What lawyer wrote this for you?
With each attempt to make things right, the outrage grows. The apology they desire is a completely bespoke one, the Chipotle burrito bowl of apologies. When they don’t get it, the taunts get meaner and more specific. Simultaneously they’ll discuss your inability to grow or accept accountability for your actions. Eventually someone posts something personal like a screenshot from your instagram story or something about your job. It becomes clear you’re being watched across multiple platforms. You panic and bail on Twitter altogether because why wouldn’t you? Your detractors celebrate. They were right about you all along. And if you ever decide to come back, you can expect to see those screenshots again, attached to a smug taunt:
This You?
This You?
This You?
And honestly? Yeah. It is. Sorry.
Interlude:
A Partial List Of Twitter Communities I Have Angered For One Reason Or Another:
Cat Twitter (For saying I was going to give my cat two hot dogs)
Fish Twitter (For saying fish suck and I don’t care if they die (in a food context))
Catholic Twitter (For saying Catholic God sucks)
People With More Than Four Kids Twitter (For saying that is too many kids)
Sex Positive Guys With Top Hats Twitter (For saying sex looks weird)
Cocaine Twitter (For not being emphatically pro-cocaine)
III. Who Are We Helping Again?
Maybe it’s the ex-Catholic in me but I find this approach exhausting. I love to dunk on legitimately bad people, everyone does, but it seems more and more like we’re so addicted to the rush the outrage gives us that we’re no longer concerned about the target.
Sure, step four works when the person is indisputably shitty. The aforementioned republican senators, right wing comedians, rich guys who refuse to apologize and instead insist on convincing you how Not Mad they are, etc. But what about when the target is just somebody who didn’t think before they posted? What about when the target is (as they are in so many cases) just a kid with a dumb opinion?
The current answer to those what if’s appears to be “who cares” and maybe we’re fine with that. Maybe we’re all content to get our dunks in despite knowing that each post carries a small chance of putting us on the wrong side of the dunking. After all, this exact strategy has worked for centuries for most religions, why not the Church of Engagement?
But what are we really changing? We demand purity but produce very little in terms of substantive moral improvement. Even if the perfect apology existed, extracting it mid-harassment would make it about as admissible as a confession at gunpoint. When you telegraph to someone that you’re willing to terrorize them to get what you want, they will say anything to prevent that outcome. Worse than that, the perfect apology’s unattainability actively incentivizes not apologizing at all. The easiest thing to do is to just delete the tweets in question, lock your account, and wait for something juicier to happen.
And for all our talk about growth and accountability, where’s the outrage for people who spend their days online harassing strangers whose crimes at their worst amount to a handful of words on a screen? And what does it say that we’re more willing to surround ourselves with people like that than people who made an ill advised joke?
It’s worth asking:
This you?