Unnamed TNG skant beefcake

Keep reading these articles wistfully eulogizing what we've collectively lost on Twitter and I think we're all forgetting that even before Musk

It was a toxic fucking abuse-hole that you could only really survive if you were super lucky

My Twitter account was closed because a bunch of trolls reported me for self-describing as "queer" (it's a slur, you see) and then some well-meaning but actually homophobic academics told me that this wouldn't have happened if I "kept it professional"

Nov 30, 2022 at 1:30pmWeb
Show threadUnnamed TNG skant beefcakeNov 30, 2022

I won't get into how when a straight bro puts "Husband, father, Christian" into his bio, that's not "unprofessional" btw

That's a rant for another day

Show threadUnnamed TNG skant beefcakeNov 30, 2022

But I want to point out that academics gleefully embedded Twitter into every aspect of our professional lives, making it all but mandatory to use it

No matter who it excluded

Show threadUnnamed TNG skant beefcakeNov 30, 2022

So you'll excuse me if I do not shed a tear

And if I prioritize making sure that you don't stomp on the people who left Twitter years ago due to abuse that you didn't care about

Over making sure that academics are able to reproduce what they had on academic Twitter on Fedi

Show threadUnnamed TNG skant beefcakeNov 30, 2022

Anyway, I wrote this in 2018

https://blog.bgcarlisle.com/2018/06/11/risks-and-harms-of-tech-in-academia/

Still rings true

The risks and harms of 3rd party tech platforms in academia – The Grey Literature

Show threadUnnamed TNG skant beefcakeDec 4

Love to read about big institutions finally deleting their X accounts now in the year twenty-and-oh-twenty-five

(What took you so long)

But also

No, the golden age of pre-Musk Twitter was a toxic shit-hole run by Jack "oops I RT'd another white supremacist" Dorsey and it excluded a lot of people and you ignored that and it sucks to hear you be like "remember when the only person who was excluded was The Research Fairy? great times!"

Show threadAlexander (Sasha) Wait ZaranekNov 30, 2022

@researchfairy agree with all of this. ♥️💔

Flip side is that #blacktwitter was vibrant for many participants and, for many, felt genuinely empowering.

For me, a central challenge for fedi is supporting black voices in the quirky and decentralized leadership here until #blackmastodon is more vibrant than anything achieved at bird site.

Not obvious how two white queers do that, friend.

Show threadMichael Nov 30, 2022
@researchfairy yeah this rings true. You look at academic circles on Twitter and Facebook and it’s clear that the tacit academic’s desire for someone—anyone—to listen to us and for us to be heard has resulted in uncomfortable trade offs.
Show thread June Nov 30, 2022
@researchfairy It's a cesspool on its best days, and it does have its strengths but imo those are in spaces that *should* have been filled by other sources. I mostly have escaped the trolling, though there was the one time a high-profile author and I disagreed on ear piercings for children; I said I didn't think people should pierce their infants ears, and she did not agree, and RTd me specifically to encourage her followers to dogpile me. That was a fun week or two
Show threadChristopher LeagueNov 30, 2022
@researchfairy The “keep it professional” academics don't sound all that well-meaning, tbh.