Leave it

I realised something this morning. It’s not particularly profound in general, I think, but I want to get it down and out of my head.

Since the election Xitter has been determined to show me MAGA posts, for whatever reason. The particular tweet this morning was a video of someone who turned out to be a Kennedy talking about food, and someone replied referencing “Big Mike”.

It took me a while, but I eventually worked out they were talking about Michelle Obama.

My first instinct was to reply and ask them, what the hell?

Then I thought no, there isn’t a good way to talk to someone like that. They’re not likely to change their mind about talking to or about people respectfully, or having a useful conversation, where people actually learn things. They’ve committed to insulting people. It’s not worth the effort or time to reply, the argument is what they want.

The next thought was that if nobody replies to them then anyone coming in across this space would see just the foulness, and that we have to keep trying to lift it so that it doesn’t look like just crap as far as the eye can see.

And that’s when I realised some things.

There isn’t likely to be anyone neutral coming into this space. For better or worse pretty much everyone’s aware of what’s been happening.

If we argue, then they get the pleasure of disagreeing with someone, of deploying “cry harder”, “cope harder”, and all the other parroted phrases which are ultimately meaningless, an attempt to copy Nelson’s “ha-ha” while not sounding like a 10 year old. (The attempt doesn’t work.)

If people respond - like someone else I saw who responded to a homophobic, insulting DM by contact the persons employer - then the cry goes up of “so much for the tolerant left!”. So what are people supposed to do - simply accept the insults? Why should they? Surely someone who’s invaded another’s personal space for the sole purpose of spouting rude, vicious words has to be willing to accept that there should be consequences to their actions.

So what’s the best solution? I’m actually now leaning towards - essentially - fuck it. Let them have X, or at least their bit of it. There are still communities if people want to use those, at least until Leon disables those because they don’t let his chosen people force their way into conversations.

Really, though, another platform like Mastodon or Bluesky is probably for the best. There’s a chance to leave the toxic playground culture behind. We aren’t committed to keeping Elmo’s X populated with people to be insulted.

For what it’s worth, I’m not just talking about right-wing people here, There are those on the left whose first response is to hurl insults, deploy the words racist, fascist, or Nazi.

When did we lose the ability to actually have a discussion? To assume that the other side isn’t full of knuckle-dragging morons, or people full of bile, but generally sane and normal people like ourselves who’ve got a different outlook?

Sure, it’s possible that any given person is prejudiced, spiteful, and won’t change. It’s also possible that they’ve looked at the same facts and come to a different conclusion, or even that they have facts which you - we - aren’t aware of.

What I’m going to try and do is to avoid the assumption that the other person is talking in bad faith, and try to actually listen to what people have to say. I may not change their mind, they may not change mine, but at least we can have a civilised discussion - and maybe, at the end, we can both have learned something.

(This has been posted without much editing, so apologies for any clumsy sentences or typos.)