The Internet is Forever
Just like diamonds... the internet is forever. Ed Sheeran certainly found that out this week when his tweets from 5-6 years ago expressing opinions some would consider problematic came to light in a Buzzfeed article after he deleted his Twitter account and then re-instated it minus these tweets. (There's a swear word or two in there, fair warning.)
It's becoming more and more common while scrolling Twitter or Facebook to see links to Buzzfeed or HuffPo posts calling out celebrities or politicians for misguided/cringeworthy tweets. I've seen a barrage of them in the last six months.
I think there are pros and cons to that sort of article. Accountability can be a great way to keep people in line and I do think it's important to foster discussions about political correctness, mutual respect, and general human kindness and empathy, but I'm not sure that the point of a call-out article is to serve as anything more than clickbait in the way that some radio hosts are known as Shock Jockeys. It feels more and more like a witch hunt sometimes, especially when the tweets are 5+ years old and there's nothing in the article contributing to the discussion other than humorously shaming captions.
I'm also not sure that the platform is the correct place for a civics or morality lesson. If a celebrity tweets something that can be interpreted as offensive, I do think it's important that they understand the negative connotations of their language/behavior, but is Twitter really the place for a formative discussion on those heavy topics? (Especially when someone is in the spotlight with millions of followers who will be quick to either jump in for support or jump in outrage?)
I understand the argument that with the spotlight comes a certain amount of responsibility (cue Spiderman with great power comes great responsibility quote). And I wish celebrities paid more attention to that fact before they tweeted, but I feel that way about some of my friends as well.
I do think politicians should be held to an obviously higher standard than celebrities, as they are elected to public office, so I don't have a problem about posts calling out inappropriate politician tweets (other than the fact that I feel like call-out posts are a tired genre of lazy journalism at this point).
(And just for the record, free speech and all that, obviously. Though I have strong opinions on the difference between free speech and hate speech, the latter of which can be unfortunately prominent on Twitter.)
So I'm split. I support accountability and wish there was an easy way to make people consider the Golden Rule/strike up some empathy and common sense before tweeting, but I don't think call-out articles generate anything other than outrage and they do nothing to add value to important conversations that should be had in regards to 'bad' tweets. What do you all think?
It's becoming more and more common while scrolling Twitter or Facebook to see links to Buzzfeed or HuffPo posts calling out celebrities or politicians for misguided/cringeworthy tweets. I've seen a barrage of them in the last six months.
I think there are pros and cons to that sort of article. Accountability can be a great way to keep people in line and I do think it's important to foster discussions about political correctness, mutual respect, and general human kindness and empathy, but I'm not sure that the point of a call-out article is to serve as anything more than clickbait in the way that some radio hosts are known as Shock Jockeys. It feels more and more like a witch hunt sometimes, especially when the tweets are 5+ years old and there's nothing in the article contributing to the discussion other than humorously shaming captions.
I'm also not sure that the platform is the correct place for a civics or morality lesson. If a celebrity tweets something that can be interpreted as offensive, I do think it's important that they understand the negative connotations of their language/behavior, but is Twitter really the place for a formative discussion on those heavy topics? (Especially when someone is in the spotlight with millions of followers who will be quick to either jump in for support or jump in outrage?)
I understand the argument that with the spotlight comes a certain amount of responsibility (cue Spiderman with great power comes great responsibility quote). And I wish celebrities paid more attention to that fact before they tweeted, but I feel that way about some of my friends as well.
I do think politicians should be held to an obviously higher standard than celebrities, as they are elected to public office, so I don't have a problem about posts calling out inappropriate politician tweets (other than the fact that I feel like call-out posts are a tired genre of lazy journalism at this point).
(And just for the record, free speech and all that, obviously. Though I have strong opinions on the difference between free speech and hate speech, the latter of which can be unfortunately prominent on Twitter.)
So I'm split. I support accountability and wish there was an easy way to make people consider the Golden Rule/strike up some empathy and common sense before tweeting, but I don't think call-out articles generate anything other than outrage and they do nothing to add value to important conversations that should be had in regards to 'bad' tweets. What do you all think?
Comments
Post a Comment