Why Some of Your Tweets Are (Probably) a Total Waste of Time and Making the Wrong People Angry

Editorial

As the editor and publisher of The New Civil Rights Movement, an award-winning news, opinion, and advocacy site that uses social media to help inform our readers, increasingly I’ve noticed a lot of people are angry, frustrated, and are taking those feelings of upset and powerlessness and sending them – right back to us.

While it may feel really good to see a story that makes your blood boil, hit “reply” or “comment” and unleash your totally justified anger, telling the author or publisher of a story how mad you are at a Congressman or Senator does nothing.

In short, you’re tweeting and Facebooking wrong, and it’s not helping anyone, least of all, you.

Case in point:

On Saturday NCRM published a story about a conservative Republican U.S. Congressman who told a pro-choice woman on Twitter that it was his “Constitutional duty, under oath, to protect your life/body,” referring to abortion.

In short, he was wrongly quoting his oath of office, claiming it says he is supposed to support and defend her body and any fetus that might be inside it. That’s just plain false. He’s taken his oath of office eight times now, to support and defend the Constitution, so it’s safe to call his comment not just false, but a lie. (And if it’s not, if he actually believed what he wrote, how did he misunderstand his oath of office to such a great degree? And what else has he been getting wrong?)

After posting the story across both NCRM’s Twitter accounts plus my own personal one, we received several comments attacking the Congressman, who happens to be Iowa’s Steve King.

The responses we got were to be expected:

“This man has no moral right representing others.”

“It is his constitutional duty to stay away from any woman’s body because it is not his”

“Then he hasn’t read the Constitution.”

“This congressman is an idiot… #LIAR“

On Facebook, you could multiply the number of comments we got from people furious with Rep. King times 100.

All these responses were fair. Not one of them (probably) were seen by the person who really needed to see them the most, Congressman King, because they were sent to our Twitter and Facebook accounts, not his.

And that’s the problem.

We are a nation of tweeters and facebookers. We’re mad. We’re angry. We’re pissed off. And we’re telling the wrong people.

Sure, it’s fun and sometimes even productive to share how you feel with your  friends, family, and co-workers. That’s great. Share away! But we don’t think you should stop there.

Of course, if you want to continue to vent without the object of your anger – or, happiness, not all stories are bad, even though it feels that way these days – seeing your thoughts, that’s your right and your choice.

But I’m going to ask a big favor: Go further.

If you’re upset/angry/furious/glad/happy/thrilled enough to comment, it’s not a big leap for you to be upset/angry/furious/glad/happy/thrilled enough to comment to the person responsible for that good or bad thing happening to let them know how you feel.

Going forward, whenever possible and appropriate, NCRM will be including the contact information of lawmakers and public servants involved in stories we write, and we’ll be asking you to reach out to them directly. We’ll give you their Twitter names and Facebook pages, and their office information when possible. It often won’t take much, if any, extra time, and it will likely make you (and all of us!) feel better. 

But most importantly, hopefully, it will make our lawmakers and public officials much more aware of how we’re all feeling, and it will let them know we’re watching them – every thing they do.

To be clear, NCRM does not support and will not enable doxxing. We will not publish personal contact information such as personal phone numbers or home addresses, nor will we ever suggest our readers or anyone make inappropriate comments or threats to anyone else. Ever.

But we will make it easier for our readers, who have proven over the eight years we’ve been publishing, to be very passionate and very well-informed, to make their voices heard.

Which, in part, is one of the reasons we were founded: to be a voice for those who didn’t feel they had one.

There’s too much at stake for your voice to not be heard. Especially now.

As always, you’re welcome to tell us what you think too.

We’re on Twitter: @gaycivilrights and @newcivilrights, and I’m @davidbadash. We’re also on Facebook, of course, and you can reach us via email.

Thanks for reading.

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Image by Ganapati Pujans/Wikimedia