Took 12 years to get to 15K. Thanks to gobar and his fellow sanghis QTing and SSing and "he blocked me "ing so much, about to hit 16K in just 7 more days.
Make it happen people https://twitter.com/gauravsabnis/status/1384183914479058953

As I said in my Spaces session today, just a little bit of smart thinking and you can make them work to spread and amplify you instead of the opposite, which is what happens these days with revolver rani, sanghihotri, etc throwing out bait. https://twitter.com/gauravsabnis/status/1386654237099184130?s=19

On popular demand, here are main points I made today.

1. Types of Sanghi Troll attacks

Tho whataboutery, sealioning are broadly used by neo-fascists like Trump and traditional fascists like RSS, the latter has a more specific and structured attacks to harass or distract

This rough typology is based on partial analysis of a couple of million sanghi tweets and responses to tweets and QTs collected since mid 2016. For a research paper that will be a follow-up to this paper from ISR last year.

1A. The RaGa Raga
First sanghi attack in response is to accuse you of loving Rahul Gandhi or Congress. It's not a serious accusation. If so many were into RaGa, congress wouldn't have so few seats.
The main purpose is to put you on the defensive and leave your original point.

Protip - Block instantly. Whether you support congress or not, this is the hallmark of THE dumbest and most abusive sanghi trolls. Not even mute. Block.

2. Looks, Weight, DP
The slightly less dumb troll will call you ugly, fat, thin, dark, bald, etc. They will typically QT your criticism of Modi with your DP and insult your appearance. I'm a lifelong fatty so doesn't bother me. But it can trigger some people. That's their plan.

Often the person hurling the insult will themselves not exactly be Idris Elba in looks. They're not clueless. It's a tactical half-volley. They WANT you to insult their looks or whatever in return and for your followers to like and RT. Increase their engagement numbers.

Pro-tip: Don't QT or RT or even ridicule them. But no need to block either. You can mute. That way they can keep QTing you, improve your visibility, and as long as your skin is thick, let them.
This only works if you can shrug off insults though.

3. "What have YOU done?"
They know you and the Prime Minister have vastly different jobs. But they will try to get you to talk about how you're making a difference to solve a problem created by Modi in the first place. They know you don't have 2 brand new 777s but still.

So you will earnestly start talking about what you are doing. I've done that often. It's hard to not respond to accusations of inaction or armchairing if you're actually doing something. But in the process, the focus shifts away from Modi again.

4. "It's crisis... Not the time to fight within indians... Support the PM now. Work out differences later"

Which is sheer chutzpah because they keep creating those crises regularly. Khudko 1940 ka FDR samajhta hai.

Protip - Block. Sounds polite but is sleazy.

There are a few other sub types but these are the big ones. Notice how utterly simplistic they are. But carefully planned and taught to IT cell employees and Telegram vultures to get you to do something in response to get them visibility and traffic. And we walk right into traps.

Other protips.
- Never QT or reply
- If screenshot, never show handle or DP
- If a mutual has not responded to a troll attacking them, resist jumping in to support your friend. Maybe they are ignoring on purpose and your well meaning reply gives the troll engagement numbers.

Notice how much Trump is driving the narrative these days? Zero! Because he no longer has twitter so no longer has well meaning but naive people QTing him and doing his work for free. Of sowing chaos, hatred, distrust. Which are the fuels of fascism.

But Trumpism and maga etc are still being attacked on US twitter everyday substantively. He just can't drive the news cycle anymore.

Modi's own twitter game is faux avuncular so he's not going anywhere.

But his minions can be defanged with some collective common sense.

Let me be clear. Their lies and misinformation and propaganda have to be countered. Can't just ignore them or you cede the discourse space to them. Fight, counter, fact check, ridicule,
BUT
without name, handle, DP.

Samajhane waale samajh lenge, na samjhe woh...

Most days, IT cell drives trending topics at peak twitter times in India. By just doing the repetitive hateful things to throw you off.

With just a little coordination and common sense, we can control the narratives instead. Will need work. But it's very doable.

I have a dream. That one day my mutuals will completely stop giving influencer oxygen to these sanghis online whose only skill is get a rise out of you. If Sanghana gets no hate QTs, why would anyone care what she says? She will go retire with Trump in maralago.

P.S. A data point that underlines that the only purpose of the BJP IT Cell is to attack opponents, not help people. Stop playing into their hands by amplifying every whine of theirs with QTs. And to criticize, do it like Nandini. Without tagging. https://twitter.com/nandiniv/status/1387016377828061194?s=19