Read on Twitter
Think that I am starting to get over this fling with Twitter now! Will speak less, and observe more – too much noise anyway. More respect for those who do not clamour for attention, approval, and networks, who do their work silently, unnoticed by everyone, often unsung. 1/n
Unfair to dismiss Twitter as an echo chamber, but in most hands, it remains just that. And this space is reflective of much of the violence the alternative spaces practice (no, not talking about the mainstream spaces we all criticise with "nuance" etc), for example 2/n
Who we choose to mourn and rage over is decided by their caste, class, regional, linguistic location. Those we know or get to know about, climb up in our manufactured hierarchies of suffering, the rest may just perish, right? Of course, "not possible to know everything" 3/n
, you'd say, and "we try our human best". Okay. But this is not an excuse for lack of spine when matters concern taking a stand against your own or when it concerns listening, with attention and sensitivity, to the ground. Where are the people,the human life in your theories? 4/n
Many brilliant minds I know are either not in social media cliques, marking themselves present in the 'revolution class' or simply do not have the privilege to carry their own names here. They cannot be named. And hence they will never be known, right? 5/n
Who do we choose to celebrate? Those who announce themselves everywhere & we all are made to believe they run the movement(s). They become personalities & everyone else is a person. They become bigger than the cause they fight for & patronize everyone else, incl. the ground. 6/n
Ultimately, we just need to remind ourselves—from time to time—why do we do what we do. And if the answer is people, the ideals we believe in, the ideas we live for, and the terrible thirst we can bear witness to by dying for, then none of this flapdoodle bs should affect us. 7/n
And no, this thread is not because anyone said/did anything to me, so I am to be passive aggressive now. Simply coz I gathered a bundle of exhausting observations re. our social media behaviour, and I grow uncomfortable with self-aggrandizing bs that negates the ground. 8/n
