Using physical appearance or personal traits as a diminutive when drawing a contrast is a lazy way to frame any topic. It is, however, an easy-to-use method to provoke a visceral reaction. I think that is a large part of why this is overdone.

#HongKong

More generally, though, this sort of framing seems pretty strongly influenced by structural factors and is used pretty generically in covering people and events.

My primary thesis is that this is just a lazy way of drawing a contrast—often one that can be made another way.

1. In #HongKong particularly, when we're discussing Joshua, Agnes, or innumerable other pro-Democracy voices, a significant number of them are younger than those of us who are writing about them. This implicitly impacts how we approach describing these individuals.

This isn't, however, particularly remarkable treatment. The same thing was also done when discussing Martin Lee and Jimmy Lai—both of whom are older than the majority of us writing about them.

You can only write from your perspective. This is why diversity in writers is important. Greater diversity of perspectives can maybe identify better ways of drawing that contrast (since, from different perspectives, a particular trait may not seem remarkable).

This can then be fed back into the process, and reused by others as a framing tool. That "bespectacled" is such a common descriptor of Joshua is an example of how a particularly resonant framing can dominate a narrative.

Figuring out the perfect framing is a collective effort.

2. Emphasizing a person's actions is acceptable, but reduces their humanity. We see a contrast here between short and long-form pieces: long-form pieces often try to frame a person's actions in the context of that person's humanity.

I appreciate the times when I get to see and understand a person's humanity, not just their political stance or what they did that day. Humans aren't automatons. My Twitter feed has a dominant theme, but it also features other random things that I'm interested in.

For people very-clearly in the public eye (e.g. Joshua, Agnes) they have assistants handling their online personas. They're aware of the consequences of posting things online. What they share online is a part of themselves that they're choosing to share with us.

For public figures, the parts of their lives that they choose to live in public seem like an appropriate well of information from which to draw material. Figuring what material to use is a secondary task and left as an exercise for the writer.

3. This is Twitter, where we're collectively well-known to carefully present well-thought-out things. When things go wrong or unconsidered, we can always easily go back and edit the tweets to make sure that our changing thoughts are well-reflected.

More seriously, given 280 characters or 750 words and a fast-paced news environment, it's not particularly surprising that we resort to simplistic framing devices. We could do better, but the pace and space discourages more-deft framing.

All in all, if we collectively decide that we want to migrate away from using physical appearance or traits as a framing method to draw contrasts, we should look instead to address some of the structural problems that result in this outcome.

In this particular situation I think—rather than arguing about it—maybe we should just ask the people we're discussing? They're readily reachable and it should be a short and simple conversation. "Is it reasonable for us to emphasize this portion of your persona?"

Also, if you have complaints about this thread, I refer you back to this tweet: https://twitter.com/nathanhammond/status/1293446918211661829