And I'm not talking about protectionism as the opposite of free trade. Nor am I talking about Twitter as a private actor engaging in the rough equivalent of censorship.
I'm talking about a perceived need to be a "protector" of another person.
It relates to two blog posts of mine last week, and a number of Twitter troops apparently rallying around Doug Henwood, especially on the first.
The posts were about segregation NOT being primarily driven by socioeconomic class, and from that, a call-out of a possible cult of Adolph Reed.
Well, I've occasionally injected myself into a fierce back-and-forth between someone I follow on Twitter who is more famous than me, and more Twitter-famous as well, and an assailant of his. Actually, just about every time I've done it, it's been with (for?) Henwood.
I realize, after getting bombarded myself, in a small degree, that:
A. It's not that fun to be on the receiving end;
B. Said person doesn't need my help, whether John Doe in general or Doug Henwood in particular;
C. That, although I hope my "interventions" didn't come off that way, most of them wind up being an echo chamber, per social psychologists' warnings that our social media connections risk becoming ever more of that, at least on matters political.
So, I apologize for doing that, and resolve to do it less.
Given that I've been on the receiving end specifically vis-a-vis Henwood acolytes, per my note above, I don't think this will be that hard of a resolution to achieve.
Well, one or the other led Henwood to block me. So, I blocked him back. So, it definitely won't be hard to achieve that resolution vis-a-vis him!
I'm also realizing that, on Twitter, and especially when its use is NOT announced in advance, the "mute" function is often both more helpful and more fun than the "block" function.
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