In the wake of the Orlando, Florida. mass shooting, as with most other instances of terrorism, I opened up Twitter and began scrolling through the #Orlando trending topic. Twitter provides me with all the resources I need to become knowledgeable about the topic at hand: credible articles and news updates from sources like CNN and the New York Times; uplifting posts expressing solidarity, support and encouragement; and opinionated rants calling for mobilization to affect change. Twitter can be a blessing really, collecting and organizing all of the information I’m interested in into very convenient and very telling hashtags. Not to mention, twitter encourages me to contribute to the dialogue, which I, like my peers, usually do.
What is most beautiful about Twitter, and a pill which is most often hard to swallow, is that it is a constant reminder than no one can be silenced. Twitter gives a voice to everyone. If you have something to say, Twitter encourages it to be expressed on your timeline so that others might read, respond and react to it. It sounds strange for me to be calling the freedom of speech a hard pill to swallow, but when I come across tweets preaching hate, especially in the wake of an act of such overwhelming hatred and violence, I find myself wanting those voices to be hushed, if not silenced altogether.
Scrolling through my timeline this morning, I came across a tweet by @basedmattforney. Matt Forney, rather than giving his support to the friends and family of the victims of the Orlando shooting or expressing sympathy and solidarity with those injured and killed only the night before, went on a Twitter rant preaching hatred, discrimination, segregation and oppression as the solution for not only the gun problem, but the issue of violence as a whole within the United States. I, personally, have never understood how hatred could possibly be used to reduce or eradicate pre-existing hatred and violence, but according to Matt Forney, I am the problem, so what could I possibly know?
And if Mr. Forney’s thoughts on blacks and Muslims in this country weren’t enough to upset you (discriminatory thoughts which received hundreds of retweets, I might add), presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, and his tendency to group and generalize all those devoted to the Islamic faith, used his Twitter account and the deaths and injuries of the Orlando shooting victims as a means to gloat about his pre-existing hatred for Muslims in this country and rant about how his policy of discrimination is the best and only real solution to everything wrong in the country.
In case I haven’t made it clear enough, I haven’t exactly had the most pleasant time scrolling through Twitter lately.
While debating whether I wanted to delete my Twitter account based on some of the despicable nonsense I've come across, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated with myself for believing that certain opinions should be muted while others are free to be shared. In reality, all notions of hate and discrimination should be treated equally as wrong, it doesn’t matter if I agree with the opinion or not. No good comes from negative thoughts, actions or perceptions, but so long as there is nothing discriminatory or offensive in a tweet, I shouldn’t have the authority to demand it removed. I have the power instead to unfollow, block and ignore it. I have no right to tell Matt Forney that his opinions don’t belong on Twitter any more than he has no right to tell me that I need to be brought under control to end violence. Well…his opinions are really pushing it. He’s pretty damn offensive...but still.
What Twitter provides me, and all of its users with, are endless opportunities for education, the exchange of ideas and personal growth. What Matt Forney, and all the other Twitter users fueled by hatred choose to express on the internet is not within my power, nor my rights, to control. I cannot choose for anyone to be more considerate of the realities of this diverse country nor my experiences as a diverse young woman. That is a choice one must make for himself. What I can choose to do, instead, is to learn from others and (hopefully) educate them in return.
Instead of deleting my Twitter account and allowing discriminatory speech to flow free, I choose to ignore the hatred that seems to catch and spread like wildfire up and down my timeline, I choose to educate in all spaces where ignorance has precedence and I choose to report and block all discriminatory speech because Twitter bigotry is one instance where snitching isn’t a bad thing.
