4

Dragging Someone Else Into It

Twitter has this fun feature wherein you can tag someone else into a conversation, ensuring they see your message and any replies to that message and so on. It's a fun way to open up conversations to people who might be interested, and it's also basically the worst thing one human being can do to another.

OK, that's still probably murder. Or overlong hugs. Maybe manspreading.

But anyways, it's not good. The main problem is that this other person might not want anything to do with the conversation. Even if they know the person who tagged them, they might not care about any of the other random strangers chirping away in the Twitter canoe they find themselves in. And these conversations can go on for days. Imagine if your phone chimed with a notification every time someone posted in a random YouTube comment thread if you want an idea of this particular hell.

Worse is what can happen when a person with a lot of followers tags someone. Your followers are essentially people like you, except a bit less clever and quite a bit meaner. Which means if you've got a lot of them, tagging someone (in particular an enemy) is a pretty sure way to flood that person's notifications with hundreds of angry, less-clever versions of you, all swarming and shrieking away like a bunch of you-shaped monkeys.

Actually, that sounds kind of rad. I regret mentioning it.

Here's another less threatening but still irritating situation: Someone speaks ill of a celebrity. On its own, this is a fine, healthy thing to do. Well done, all involved. But then one of this person's followers tags in that celebrity, and suddenly they're in an awkward conversation with @frandrescher. Aside from being an awkward thing to do to the insulter, it's even worse for the insultee. What are they supposed to do when they find out someone insulted them? I get insulted online only a fraction of what I probably deserve, and I still hide under thick blankets every time it happens. I can't imagine what an actual famous person feels when ... oh, that's why they have people read Twitter for them. Right.

3

Retweeting Uncritically

It's nice when you learn something that you already know! It fits right in! And since it's already right there on Twitter, you don't even have to condense it down to its most salient 140 characters; you can just retweet it and let your friends know what they almost certainly already know about too.

2

Making Jokes When The Mood Is Not Right

Twitter is great for jokes. That might be what it's best for, except when it's freaking out, which is definitely what it's best for, forget what I said earlier about jokes.

A necessary part of telling jokes on Twitter is keeping up with what everyone is talking about. This not only lets you know the references people will get and the jokes that are already badly worn out, but will also let you know when people don't want to hear jokes at all. During a disaster, or a terrorist attack, or one of the existential crises which seem to afflict us so much more frequently these days, no one wants to laugh at your fucking Smurfs gag. Come on. I don't need to tell you why.

...

OK, aside from the timing, it's not very woke, pal. Smurfette can do what she wants on her own terms. It's not for any of us to judge.

Anyways, this is most glaring-

Oh, also it's long been implied the Smurfs reproduce asexually, so it's not even like that accurate.

Anyways, this is most glaring when it's done by corporate Twitter accounts. Many companies draft and review all their tweets well in advance, just to make sure all their messaging is on-brand and whatnot. They then schedule the tweets to be posted at a later date. But by taking the human element out of the timing of their jokes -- or at least assigning it to some weekend intern -- these companies can end up in exactly the disaster they were trying to avoid. Lowe's or Little Caesar's might not accidentally praise Pol Pot or something, but if they make a joke when everyone else in the world is weeping, it's almost as bad.

1

The Callout

The intent behind the callout is pretty understandable. When people say racist, sexist, homophobic, or other awful things and get away with it, it only emboldens them -- or their friends -- to say it again. So we shouldn't remain silent when we see this stuff in the wild. That's what the callout is for; you see someone say something awful and call them out for it. Maybe they'll reconsider what they said and apologize for it. Or maybe they'll just shut up. Sometimes this can get a little heated, and insults generally get tossed around, but hey, why use kid gloves when dealing with a racist, right?