You know, last year, or about eight months ago, there was a point where somebody said something I thought was really tacky about me, and I posted a grumpy tweet. And people started coming in by the thousands and defending me, and a very wise friend of mine said, “Neil, that’s bullying.” And I suddenly went, “Oh, fuck, you’re right,” and deleted my tweet and apologized. And it was bullying. It was bullying because it’s not actually a level playing field. I can get angry, and if I get angry and upset, fifteen thousand people may get upset on my behalf. That’s great if you’re somebody who’s been screwed by a big company and they’ve stolen your design and I happen to tweet about it. And I wake up the next morning and it’s hitting the newspapers, and actually the company has pledged to fix it, and things are going well. My ten thousand people then expands into millions of people across the web, and that’s great. If you’re one person who posted a thoughtless or a mean or even just something that I disagreed with, and I mobilize such hordes — it’s bullying, because it’s not equal. It’s the equivalent of getting into an argument with the federal government. They win.
No comments:
Post a Comment