If you want to run your own personal experiment about whether what @austenallred said was true about people being more censored or self-censored today, go and look at what the people you were following were tweeting about 10 years ago today. (ht @dzohrob) https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=filter%3Afollows%20until%3A2008-12-31%20-filter%3Areplies&src=typd …https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1079804021710286849 …
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I don't think this works... Twitter has become a more public space in that time. So 10 years ago I might have felt right or wrong I was whispering to friends and a few randos lost in the noise while today when I make statements I assume they could be quoted in the news
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Replying to @corbett @kimmaicutler and
IMO threads like Austen's end up w/ less complaining abt not being able to whisper intimate things to friends. Much of what he's quoting is more abt people w/ power/privilege complaining that it's ~not ok~ to air their bigotry (or sometimes just Bad Takes) publicly w/o criticism
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Replying to @hypatiadotca @corbett and
I've said it before in threads like these but most of the words Austen is signalboosting are the words of cowards.
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Replying to @hypatiadotca @corbett and
that certainly explains a big chunk of Austen’s tweets, but looking @ “twitter 10y ago” reveals more than that: a whole class of simple/quotidian social media interactions which barely exist on the platform (at least amongst the biased sample of my follows). and near-zero outrage
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I think the pleasant quotidian-ness has moved elsewhere (Instagram stories are where my social circles practice it incredibly skillfully, joyously, and prolifically)
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Replying to @hypatiadotca @dzohrob and
I’ve been chewing on the “outrage” thing a bit, though - I think people aren’t familiar with looking at things through a lens of power, and so “hey that’s racist” or w/e feels like censure/outrage rather than, well, justified
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Replying to @hypatiadotca @dzohrob and
A lot of folks think they are being ~heterodox~, though, when they are actually just being throwback bigots. And threads like Austen’s conflate genuine heterodoxy with bigotry in an imo very frustrating way
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I think Austen’s thread actually had a left-right variety though, including some of the casual supremacist stuff you pointed out.
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