Sometimes, I get long drawn out emails from “trolls” about how they fantasize about killing me, or raping me, or both. Other times, I have 100s of accounts, telling me that they should’ve killed all of us or celebrating my dead family members.

There are people who tell me I deserved cancer and that’s sad I didn’t die from it. There was people who said I made it up for sympathy. There’s people who made up weird stories about me being a socialite from Los Angeles or that I’m paid by NATO or the Mislim Brotherhood.

Whore, slut, dumbass, terrorist, ISIS propaganda whore, NATO paid shill, cunt, twat, Handjar Division girl, IzetbegoBITCH (def a favorite), Islamist, fake Muslim, kaffir, bitch a lot, on an almost daily basis since I started tweeted.

But then are also times, where I’ve said something wrong or sometimes just stupid and people have corrected me and criticised me.

I can tell the difference because pile ons have never been the same as justified criticism.

It’s anxiety inducing when you screw up in a public & open way, even if it’s a mispelling or getting a minute fact wrong, or just saying something not well thought out. It’s anxiety inducing because 100s of people are telling you that you’re wrong and as a human you get defensive

We are not responsible for bullying, harassment, or threats. But we are responsible for being critised when we screw up. A lot of these people whining have never been criticised before and cannot handle it now, but criticism is not cancel culture nor has it ever been.

It sucks being wrong but we are human and we will be wrong. When you have 100s of people telling you that you are wrong, it sucks even more. But you’re not being canceled for it, you’re being brought to account.

There is a huge difference between someone like me, who holds no real power, being attacked by racists, sexists, nationalists and Islamophobes and a journalist who gets their facts wrong being criticised for their analysis or ignorance.

There are people who take things too far, yes even on the left. It’s social media, there’s bravery behind a screen from people who would be too scared to say anything in person and sometimes that turns into cruelty. But even cruelty is not necessarily “cancel culture”.

But just imagine if I had a meltdown every single time someone attacked me on here? I’d get never get anything done!

The price we pay for publicly speaking out, whether in a good way or a bad way, is criticism and yes, sometimes even attacks. Grow up, and just deal with it.

There are far more and worse attempts to “cancel” regular people for slightly screwing up, even if their intentions are good than there is actual harassment and “cancelation” of people in power. I wish people would def those who get attacked on a daily basis w/ such ardency.

I would like to add, that everyone should be a bit more kind in their approach, we shouldn’t forget real people exist behind twitter accounts. But, most importantly, people are dicks and will be dicks, we cannot always do much about that, we can just chose how we react to it.