I have enough followers on here (👋 💞) that I think it is worth a little thread on how I relate to social media and online conversations & try to cultivate community
I am a person, not an object. I have personal thoughts, feelings, experiences, a family, & a life. Angry interactions from strangers & esp those interested in exploiting me as An Example Of Some Battle of Yours are dehumanizing & will get blocked (e.g.: "this is why those Ex Twitter people should be banned by default")
I am a scientist, and science is very hard and complicated. That means I think out loud and ponder and am wrong sometimes, including on topics that are very personal and real to many of us. Genuine questions ("basic" or otherwise) give me great joy; credibility deficit behavior and being asked to prove my credentials over and over again does not. To hold space for being warm and welcoming on science communication I opt out quickly from one-way "prove it" style conversations.
For some reason I find it peaceful to treat social media like my own open-in-public lab notebook but am not as prone to being embedded in a lot of replying (feels like walking up onto somebody else's porch??). I don't think this is how everyone else feels and it's just how I feel. It leads me to expect folks to do their homework by paying attention to cues outside of one post like reading replies, reading my bio, spending time to figure out who I am before leaping to interpret something.
The quickest route to a block from me is creating contempt culture. I value when people want to interact with my conversations (esp on social science in tech) as a space to ponder WITH me, & I am honored when people share with all of us their personal experiences and deep feelings in response to & alongside science. Plus, I work in topics where many people have felt little room for it and have many scars.
Contemptuous dismissive reactions against those feelings is brutal & not the vibe here.
Not everything I share is for everyone -- how could it be? Sometimes I make silly jokes, or sideways references; sometimes I might understand a word differently than you do or make a typo or don't finish a clause. I also have #LongCovid , which means managing my stress, fatigue, and exposure to threat is quite LITERALLY life and death for me.
I block anyone who reads into this as moral failing. I don't tolerate "you didn't mention x, therefore you must be evil and hate x" on social media.
I think these are my main "rules" (more like guidelines, really :D ) that I keep in my head to try and cultivate the type of social media that I want for me and the folks who join me in conversation around here.
Feel free to share your own strategies for wellbeing, dialogue, and online social communities in reply to this thread, I do really enjoy knowing how others think about this!
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