Engaging with others in good faith a thread:

This is a topic I have cared about for quite a while especially given all of the discussions recently. It is one that seems incredibly simple, but social media causes us to simply not care about it much. For example calling people out is the new "woke" thing to do

The biggest issue I believe is that we fundamentally forget there are people on the other side of the screen. Not in the literal sense (although bots come to mind) but still. We just don't think about the lives the people on the other side of the internet live.

For example, someone may make a mad ignorant tweet. Okay, our first reaction is probably "yo wtf is this take on my TL right now fuck this person" some people even feel as though tweeting this is enough to move on. In my opinion this is just grand standing and performative af

The only thing this signals is, "look at this take I disagree with, I am correct for disagreeing with it therefore y'all should also disagree" I would argue this is a fundamentally bad faith argument. There is no attempt of nuance, no attempt to try and educate, etc.

However, the bigger issue is the passive aggressive quote tweets that disguise themselves as good faith praxis. These tweets normally sound like, "B**ch you have no idea wtf you're talking about, get your ignorant ass out of here" or your stereotypical "cancel culture" tweets

These tweets fundamentally could care less if the other person tries to defend themselves because they will simply dog-pile them no matter what, but the main point of these tweets is to get a reaction to justify the dog-piling. "Look they found it funny I called them out fuck em"

In my opinion this is the biggest issue. These bad faith arguments create apathy towards the subject we ought to be educating on. Dog-piling a person who made a problematic tweet really does nothing, but cause them to eventually stop caring and eventually "man fuck CC" follows

This reaction is normal, you can not be expected to get "dunked on" for hours on end and still care about learning what you do wrong. Additionally, bad faith "vultures" (people who come after the dog-pile to extend a fake olive branch) are just as problematic

How often do you see someone tweet a day after someone got dog-piled on a completely unrelated tweet, "cool but isn't this you?" They could care less about your response because the objective is once again to "dunk on them" so how can we change this?

1. Stop looking for the easy QT caption. Keep it in the replies, not only does this keep dog-piling to a minimum (which leads to the apathy we want to avoid) but it allows a direct attempt to interact with the person in a meaningful way. DMs are harder but always better imo

2. Don't come off as confrontational. I always ask a question to try and prod why they believe the opinion they made, "What about vaccines do you not trust?" questions like these are important because it can help deescalate the conversation so you can lead into a broader disc.

3. Do not expect them to respond. Not everyone is going to respond even if you try to reply, DM if you can, but otherwise consider other ways that you can educate. Things like unrelated threads for your followers to see etc. can be really helpful

4. At the end of the day just don't be an ass. We are all human, I as an Arab queer person face oppression, and life differently than an Asian woman. Understanding that we face different experiences can help a lot in having an education first mindset.

We are all different, we all experience different things in life, and we all have different backgrounds. We should look to expose others to different experiences rather than bashing them for having the "wrong" ones Love eachother and try to educate, it's the only way love wins <3