So People Are Angry At You On Twitter,

It’s 2016. The internet’s been around for a pretty long time now, and I still see journalists, comedians, and other people with platforms responding to large amounts of complaints and criticism with blanket statements that basically amount to “you’re all being shit to me”, shutting it all out. There are a lot of people on the internet (which has been around for a pretty long time now), you should have already thought of this, you should have already come up with a plan for dealing with it, preferably one that isn’t just doubling down and holding fast to the belief you did nothing wrong. Here are things you have to keep in mind when you come up with one:

1. If you fuck up, even accidentally, people won’t be polite about it. You can’t help this, they’ve seen shit like your fuck up before and probably a lot, and probably they’ve seen people who made the same fuck up defend themselves and double down before too so they’re already a bit burned out on the hope it was an innocent mistake and you’ll be more than willing to listen. There’s nothing you can do about that, it’s just the way things are right now and you’ll have to live with it.
2. There are a lot of people on the internet. Having a platform online is less like being on TV or having your writing in a magazine and more like standing in the street with a megaphone and a literal platform; there are a lot of people, right there. It’s not your fault if it gets overwhelming, of course it can be overwhelming, and it makes total sense to take some time away from wherever those people are. None of this makes them wrong. Maybe this is a group (or these are groups) of people who you’ve just, even accidentally, told to fuck off, or implied were inherently ridiculous or bad, or just not included in your assessment of what types of people can exist. There are a lot of them and it can be overwhelming. They might also not be wrong at all.
3. If anyone does cross a line (such as using slurs, or doxxing you, or threatening to), it’s totally okay to tell that person in particular, and anyone who supports them, to fuck off. Not everyone, just them and their supporters. Those people have actually crossed a line and can’t be considered decent or reasonable.
   Just being angry though, by the way, is not crossing a line.
4. This is basic and you should already know this but; marginalised people’s experience is more important than things you’ve learned, or worse, things you reckon are true. If you don’t belong to a marginalised group or type of person, you can’t possibly know or recognise how much they’re misrepresented or how much just bad shit the media throws at them, you actually cannot have that kind of empathy, even if you want to, even if you think you can. Do not tell people they’re wrong if they say you fucked up.
5. This is also basic; your intentions don’t make a big difference. If you didn’t intend to fuck up, that’s good, but it doesn’t change the fact you did fuck up. Not having intended to is good but it isn’t a defence, you still need to learn to do better, and change the thing you wrote/made if you can, or remove it completely.
6. People backing you up and defending you doesn’t mean a damn thing. Once again, there are a lot of people. You could do literally anything and there’d be people who’d like you for it. No matter how many people there are who think you didn’t fuck up, it doesn’t actually mean a damn thing.

People are going to complain if you fuck up. That’s their right, that’s to be expected, that’s how things should be. We probably don’t have the perfect platform for giving or receiving criticism right now so we have to work with what we’ve got. We have to still try to be decent and respectful people, even when it’s overwhelming.