this is such a good thread on reply etiquette, specifically the bone-deep weariness of attempting to parse whether someone being an asshole in your replies is being an asshole TO you, or thinks they're agreeing with you

people yell at me all the time for reading their tone wrong https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1387232397775851522

having a one-strike mute/block policy, finally closing my DMs (despite feeling enormous guilt about it), and continually reminding myself that I don't owe anyone a fight no matter how bad they're jonesing for one with me, have helped keep things a bit more manageable, but still

the best way I can explain my twitter experience is that at this point it is effectively no longer possible for me to go a full day without at least one stranger's behavior in my mentions causing me a level of anxiety that forces me to log off for awhile and go walk it off

part of it, and this is where the guilt comes from, is if someone replies in a way that grates on me and i'm like "hey knock it off", other people see my reply, and people who have very small accounts have accused me of bullying/punching down for that https://twitter.com/alisonkertz/status/1387244288245997570?s=20

i rarely drag civilians unless they've been EGREGIOUS, and I try to be aware of where the balance of power is, but if THEY thought we were just joking and suddenly 50 people are mad at them, then I'm the asshole for not doing the exhaustive emotional labor of reading their tone

plus like, anytime someone with more than 10k followers tweets about the way EVERY ASPECT of your ability to use this platform transforms OVERNIGHT at that threshold, there will always be people rolling their eyes at your champagne problems, so i feel weird talking about it

and I have it better than a lot of people! most of you are lovely! i've made so many friends on twitter from just random strangers replying to a tweet or DM-ing me and i don't want to lose that because like 99.99% of you are genuinely rad

but the other .01% make it hard