I have a number of social media accounts on several platforms. I have Facebook accounts (which are currently inactive due to my general dislike of Facebook’s way-too-indulgent approach to insurrectionists, fascists and misinformation promoters). I have accounts under another name at counter.social, a new-generation social medial platform that is a paid project with no spam and no bots. (Yes, this is really true).
I have multiple Twitter accounts. One is under this name, one is under the name of my alter ego, and I have a couple of other accounts purely for politics and current affairs.
I am trying to keep politics and current affairs engagement off of my primary Twitter account in 2022. I may not always succeed, because Twitter does not really support you being logged into multiple accounts simultaneously on the same device. You have to keep flip-flopping, and sometimes I forget to flip or flop.
I also try to keep the really salacious stuff off of the Rupert Ramsgate account, and confine it to the Belem Knight account. I made a significant error 18 months ago when I attempted to talk salaciously to a person thinking I was on the Belem Knight account but I was in fact on the Rupert Ramsgate account. I got my miserable ass seared medium rare, and deservedly so. I will not make THAT mistake again.
My approach to interaction on my political and current affairs accounts on Twitter is a lot more crisp and (dare I say it) judgemental than when I am Rupert Ramsgate. At my age, life is too short to have to spend time arguing with people who live in Cloudcuckooland or Lalaland, or who are unable to follow even the first principles of sensible interaction. So my Block button is used liberally in that forum.
Over here in Rupert land, I have yet to Block anybody, although I have Muted a couple of people. I am, as I said, trying to avoid getting sucked into political discussions, which tend to raise the temperature.
One thing that I always try to do when entering a discussion or initiating a discussion is to extend the Principle of Charity. Ray Perkins Jr., in his excellent book Logic and Mr. Limbaugh, explains that the Principle of Charity is an important allowance that one should make when starting a debate or a discussion. So I assume that the person on the other end of the discussion is genuinely engaged in a polite and good-faith interaction, until or if they demonstrate otherwise.
They can demonstrate otherwise by any one of a number of what I term Tells (yes, I am actually writing a book about Tells, more about that later). Classic Tells include (but are not limited to):
- Sarcasm (which, at its worst, is really a form of verbal bullying)
- Dismissive, bird-flipping responses
- Ad hominem insults (especially at the beginning of a response)
- Attempts at ridicule
If, for example, I read a response beginning with something like “Look here, libtard sheeple”, I think I can safely conclude that the other person is not really interested in any good-faith exchange of thoughts or ideas. Just a hunch. At that point, I usually discard the principle of charity and move to consideration of whether I even want to continue the dialogue. Life being too short etc. etc.
When I receive a response that I am unable to determine the intent of, I tend to assume that the person is operating in good faith, and continue on that basis. Sometimes, of course, it becomes clear that this was an incorrect assumption. In which case a re-calibration is required, because life is too short etc. etc. Sometimes, however, the hurdle is a misunderstanding, or a sensitivity on the part of one or both of us, which needs to be understood and, if necessary, discussed.
At this point in human history, there are a lot of people on social media who are carrying social and societal frustrations. I include myself in that group or groups. These frustrations do have the tendency to make us all less tolerant than we should be of messages that somehow jar our sensibilities or sensitivities.
On my Rupert Ramsgate Twitter account, I am trying hard in 2022 to make sure that my messages are as clear and unambiguous as possible, and I am trying to not draw the most negative conclusion from responses that I receive. I may not be totally successful, but we live in stressful times, and the last thing I want to do is to be gratuitously obnoxious or confrontational, although I have to admit that one of my character traits is that I am not very tolerant of uninformed or unsupportable ideas or opinions. I do routinely count to a large number during the day as I talk myself out of biting on some item of bullshit clickbait. Especially on the Rupert account.