
When having fun on Twitter went awry for Brent - DanBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/disability-45901125
======
jmmcd
In the end, they're optimistic that Twitter can be a positive and fun
experience, but I don't share that optimism.

~~~
eksemplar
I agree, this article is basically a long list of unfortunate and terrible
things.

If you can’t even keep the happy achievements of a guy with downs from
descending into an angry internet mob, then there really isn’t much hope for a
positive future for twitter, is there?

~~~
partiallypro
That's because the article is focused on the negatives, not the positives.
There are negative people everywhere, in life. You have bad waitresses and
good waitresses, people that cut you off in traffic and people that let you
in. It's part of being alive.

------
mabbo
> "Do you want a medal?" one woman quipped.

> "Do you mean a man rather than a child Brent? It comes across as a man
> rather than a woman and I'm sure you don't believe that women can't choose
> their clothes and hair!" the academic tweeted.

As difficult as it must be to live with Down's Syndrome, I feel so much more
pity towards the kind of people who gets pleasure criticizing the mentally
disabled on the internet.

~~~
dmix
But did the first one deserve to be "hounded" and harassed until she left
twitter? Those people are just as bad IMO.

> But some of Brent's followers hounded the woman, even after she deleted the
> tweet. Jacqui tried to rein it in and said she would deal with any "bother"
> on the account, but eventually the woman was forced off Twitter.

The mother DM'd the woman and she apologized immediately. Lynch mob internet
justice can be equally destructive as some thoughtless likely uninformed (that
he had down syndrome) tweet.

~~~
vlunkr
Even if her Tweet was uninformed, it's still not a nice thing to say. One of
the big problems with social media is that people have very different
standards about what they will say on the internet vs. real life. It wouldn't
have happened if she hadn't decided to be a jerk to someone she didn't know.

~~~
isoskeles
People are sarcastic in real life too. “Want a medal?” is usually harmless.

~~~
majormajor
Would you drop a sarcastic comment into someone else's conversation in a
public space?

The main lesson here, as always, is don't tweet... it's a context-less
shitshow.

~~~
slededit
I've seen it done. Sometimes justified sometimes not, but in no case was
either party relentlessly hounded after the immediate incident.

------
DoreenMichele
Wonderful article. More power to Jacqui and Brent. I'm seriously impressed
with the position they take here on various matters. She's a minister and she
seems to walk the walk more than most I've known. That heartens me. I've known
a few people like that and they are always wonderfully life giving to be
acquainted with.

I live with a serious disability and I have raised two special needs sons.
They are adults and still live with me. Neither has ever had a job, though
they nursed me back to health after doctors essentially wrote me off for dead.

So I have some firsthand experience with the challenges involved in trying to
talk about life with a disability or a special needs relative. It's
challenging in all situations.

I don't know that it is really worse on the internet. It certainly gets
magnified by the fact that you can be talking at so very many more people than
you are likely to be dealing with in meat space. But I am generally more open
online than in person about the special needs in the family. I find it vastly
worse to deal with the crap in person.

In most cases, ignorant, appalling remarks on the internet won't materially
harm me in the same way and to the same degree that ignorance and prejudice
IRL can rapidly become a huge problem. There are ways in which I do feel
materially harmed by such on the internet, but it's just vastly more
problematic in a very immediate way to have people in meat space putting their
ignorance in my way.

------
alexandercrohde
When I read something like this my first instinct is always to do a root-
cause-analysis (5 why's) like I would with a software problem. I recommend
trying it.

What went wrong?

\- An innocent person has heard hurtful things about himself on twitter

\- Why? (Is it Twitter is too negative? Or Twitter exposes you to greater
range/quantity of remarks? Or because his mom made an account for him? ) All
good questions, let's go with the first one

\- Why is twitter negative? (Is it just a convenient place to expose the
negativity people always feel? Is it just a certain subset of bad users who
enjoy creating drama for kicks? Or does the environment lead to escalating
miscommunication/conflict?)

\- Why does the environment lead to escalating miscommunication/conflict?
(Because you might not recognize if a tweet is by somebody with down syndrome
when an online medium? Because it's easy to misunderstand somebody if you
judge them on isolated remarks? Because a lot of discussion is on emotional
topics which leads to impulsive tweets? Because it's easier to get angry at a
remark than a person?)

...

------
jimworm
For me, the more shocking discovery in that article is that there are actually
organisations that consider genetic screening for Down's Syndrome to be
eugenic discrimination.

Although people with Down's syndrome have a high likelihood of passing on
Down's syndrome if they do have children, inherited cases are extremely rare.

------
telesilla
What I found most interesting in this article is the awareness that because of
early testing, Down's Syndrome is going to be less common. That's a really
heavy question for society to consider: this is a genuine issue of technology
having serious implications.

Ironically, the article ends with "often, disabled people find that whatever
they do becomes political to others".

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Yhippa
Twitter has changed so much since the beginning. It used to be a "smaller"
community of people who posted content or brain-thoughts in good faith. Over
time it's gotten so incredibly edgy and hostile in almost every type of
content whether it be technology, sports, or some other thing.

Tragedy of the commons.

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booleanbetrayal
Twitter is the worst platform ever. It brings out the absolute worst in
people, rewarding for shock.

~~~
ben_w
Unfortunately, I have seen worse. I guess we can be thankful that *chan boards
never became mainstream.

~~~
ahqu
chan boards would've died had they become mainstream. I'm glad that never
happened, many of those communities are worth preserving.

------
ahqu
I can't help but wonder what the hell did the family expect in this case.

The internet is not full of assholes... Life is full of assholes, and the
internet lets us all express ourselves anonymously. That's all there is to it

~~~
dasil003
I think it's more nuanced than that. How about: we are all assholes sometimes,
the internet (and Twitter in particular) makes it harder to keep those
reactions in check.

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camillomiller
Stories like these tend to convince me that the total balance of having social
networks in the world is utterly negative. They are the equivalent of leverage
in options trading for human interactions and communications.

