SOCIAL MEDIA PILLORY

On the 11th March 2018 I went through a very bad episode on Twitter and today I had to think about it and act upon it and these are the thoughts about what happened to me but could happen and surely happens to many everyday. Someone accused me publicly of “death threats” because a sarcastic tweet. The whole episode started with me suggesting to this person to avoid to shame publicly people and confronting people with offensive and abusive language and this person managed to turn her faults against me and publicly slandering me and trying to put her whole community against me. I have my faults, surely that of caring too much about the community I am part of since 9 years ago, Twitter, and advice for a more inclusive and empathic behavior, but her accusations went too far. Offending me, accusing me, publicly make a fool out of me while playing the victim. I always believed social media would help people for empathy, integration, inclusion, support, get communities closer, positive discussions but it’s just happening the other way round. Every day public shaming, oppressive behaviour, aggressive attitude disrupt social relationships and putting privacy and individual at risks.
Social media justice totally depending on the authority of algorithms that do not contextualize events and just mark and label people without a trial. Our freedom is at risk but even more our sanity. Every community is turning against each others and the only means seems to be violence and fighting and bullying and trolling.

These are some of the topics that I experienced and thought about after this experience and inspired my thoughts

In the pictures that will follow I tried to explain what happened. I do not wish to move any public accusation towards this person and I wish to protect this person identity. A social media should be a place for socializing, discussions and informations but most of the time is not. They become spaces for public pillory.

Image I shared on social media to explain what happened

Screenshot from my first tweet where all started

Basically, I was suggesting that maybe ignoring could had been a better choice as the story was very silly and inoportune and also, offending that girl publicly, bringing her to the social media pillory just because she had posted a photo of a man without its consent was not the right thing to do. The girl made a mistake but why attack her that way? The post reached a huge audience. 68 retweets and 660 favorites. Even if everybody intentions was probably that to defend that man from the girl’s bad joke, I think this was putting at the same time at risk the identity of that man and that of the girl that had shared the story as her name and profile picture were not blured and clearly visible. The girl had made a mistake but why bully her just for that silly and inoportune story? If we are right we are not entitled to attack someone publicly that way. “This girl sucks lol”, “Dumb bitchhhh”. This is abusive language and aggressive behavior and should always be avoided.That’s bullysm and it should be fought all of the time. So I suggested a different approach, maybe considering more the person we are attacking and publicly shaming even if that person had made a mistake or said something stupid.

In the social media tribunal everybody is a judge.

The person I was commenting didn’t appreciate my empathy and went on retweeting and quoting my tweet comment. She did this in a second episode aswell and I believe she did that to decontenxtualize my comments and using those against me to publicly slander me.

Screenshot of her retweet quote of my comment. I do not understand the need she had to make a tweet about my comment instead than replying to me in her tweet thread. The only reason I can see is that she needed to make a case out of me to manifest her anger and frustrations and attack me and make a fool out of me in front of her community and turn her community against me.

She totally took the distance from me, totally offended by the pronoun “we” and shouted proud her claim for freedom of speech. I did not tell her to shut up. Neither I told her to delete her tweet. I was advicing a different behavior in respect of that girl privacy and freedom. But freedom often is something very personal, it regards only “me” and also freedom of speech is confused with freedom of abusing someone in a vulnerable position. Freedom is one of the most abused and exploited but never really understood concept. On social media freedom is trashed and used according someone’s convinient use of it. This person probably was not aware that the girl she was calling a “dumb bitchhhhh” was a free human being too. I find it really scary that because someone makes a mistake this guilty person will have to pay and accept public shaming as “shame on you, you made me offend you” or some twisted logic like that. I like to make it clear. I am not advocating the girl that took the picture of that man without his consent and posted it online to make fun of him (we need story all of the time to share online, obsessive and compulsory behavior?) but I am only worried about the harshness that the crowd feels against who do something wrong and deserves social media punishment. This trend of taking photos of people on public transports or in every other public place should also stop. Nobody deserves to end online beyond their knowledge and consent and be made fun of. Respect privacy, you will not lose popularity if you post 3 stories instead than 30.

Of course, as you can see by my reply, I was like, ok, of course you have your freedom, why claiming it so loudly and taking my comment out of context? Probably already trying to push me in the corner and turn me into her oppressor and her into the victim. The bully act as the victim. Very common strategy for self defense. I must be honest, my sarcasm was starting to boil. I felt that she wanted to argue and took the chance to throw me to the crowd and feast on my social media cadaver. This felt as a very bizarre situation and I wanted to see where she wanted to lead me. As I stated here above and on Twitter, I have my faults in this story but I didn’t expect her to go that far.

My sarcasm started to boil out from the pot.

Online too many times people think it is ok to publicly shame people and totally slander or expose someone identity. Taking picture of someone in an office or on a bus and post it on social media to make fun of them. Privacy is at risk and also disrupting social interactions.

Screenshot posted on Twitter to advocate my position and defend myself publicly.

me trying to shine bright like a diamond totally unaware that I was going to bring pitch darkeness on my peaceful lazy sunday afternoon. Sarcasm boiled out of the pot.

In these tweets she already tries to point against me my comment and advice telling me that I am doing with her what she had done with that other girl. I think she didn’t really understood my first comment. I didn’t call her tweet silly but the other girl’s post. Anyway, she was approaching me for arguing. Her provocations flow, my sarcasm is pipping hot but I wanted this to end because I didn’t want to argue and she was totally missing the point and just defending her self from an invisible attack.

Whatever we say online it sounds like an accuse!

It’s very common to move accuse towards someone, heavy terrible accusations just to defend our point or to twist the situation in our favor being offensive, exposing people and labelling them, to publicly shame them and turn a whole group of people against someone.

I had to explain the difference between politeness and inability. If someone tags me in a comment, if someone tweets me something, I do not like to walk out on that person and ignore the message, comment especially if the tone starts to get a bit abusive, patronizing and offensive for not reason. I know, I should have walked away. I tried to say good bye but she wanted the last word, I guess. She wanted me to leave but wanted just a last confrontation with me otherwise I do not understand her tone and attitude becoming a bit more aggressive and direct.

She deserved an applause, professional online bullying. I should have walked away, I know, I know.

Here she throw all of her frustration at me and accuses me of feeling better than everyone (everyone who?). You do not know me, how does she dare to talk to me like that? Before I walked away, I throw my sarcasm bomb at her. I throw her a tweet armed with a gif + a text. I throw a meme at her.

She does that again. Retweeted and quoted my tweet bringing it out of context to publicly shame me. This time accusing me, laughing, of “death threat”. I delivered another spoon of sarcasm to her but I was really pissed off with her. That was a violent accuse.

I do not understand why someone feels the need to publicly accuse someone in a shaming way. Accusing someone of something so bad as death threating when that it’s not the real case, obviously, and to go on with public shaming without considering the consequences for someone reputation and identity. I use social media for work. I am a new media artist and I have my community online. That’s a very heavy accuse but posted online with such a frivolous attitude and putting my reputation at risk to prove your community what? My sarcasm was really mistaken for a death threat? I doubt that. So why go on accusing me of such oppressive and offensive behavior that could have legal consequences and a negative impact on my reputation? Why do we use social media with such irresponsible attitude? That’s not freedom of speech. That’s abusive and aggressive behavior and got nothing to do with freedom of speech. Pure social media pillory.

Entering the void. Social media jurisdiction based on the authority of algorithms.

Accuses like that are very problematic when happens on social media where justice is based on the authority and decision of an algorithm and where it’s very easy to ruin someone reputation and an user profile account gets marked as abusive by the social media platform software. Especially because a particular tweet doesn’t get contextualized and the judgement is based on only one perspective and accusation and one single event.

She reported my tweet as abusive and I was judged as abusive by Twitter. After the popular tribunal now it was time to be judged and shamed by the platform jurisdiction.

It is the first time that I found myself in this type of situation and I was totally shocked by the way that Twitter handles these events. A tweet totally out of context becomes a valid proof for being punished. Also, I am pretty sure that a sarcastic tweet can not be mistaken for a “death threat”. This happens only in authoritarian regimes without freedom of speech. In my tweet there was not other intention than that to tell that person to fuck off. So why I get a message about promoting or encouraging self-harm? How Twitter got to that conclusion? And how they value their decision and what their decision is based on? Why Twitter is entitled to accuse me of promoting suicide and self-harm just like that, for a sarcastic tweet? My choice maybe was not fortunate, ok, I can understand that, rest in follishness could have worked better than rest in peace, but to accuse someone of promoting suicide and self-harm is totally another matter. Really excessive, severe and inoportune and offensive. If the charge is so serious why base it just on that tweet? It’s someone right to report a wrong behavior but let’s do not abuse it or we risk to condemn someone to really serious accuse and denigration for a gif because someone decides that. Sarcasm online became “death threats” and “protomoting suicide and self-harm”. This system will kill freedom of speech. This is abuse of power and totally not democratic.

It’s oppressive to accuse someone just because you feel offended and wrongly exploit your right to denounce just to punish someone. It’s opprossive to publicly slander people with very violent accusation such as death threats.

Conclusions after this experience? I see social media becoming a battle field. This happens everyday. People arguing about politics, religions, race, football, etc etc. People grouping in small community and fighting against eachother and feeling under threat all of the time. Probably social media are just the digital picture of reality and we are just living in a world getting more and more divided. We are all judged, controlled and categorized without a fair trial. It’s an invisible regime.

Social media empower us but also makes us very vulnerable.

STOP using social media for public shaming, exposing identity, for abusive and oppressive behavior disrupting privacy, social interactions and putting people against each others.