Post

John Scalzi
@scalzi.com

Apropos to a post I'm not going to quote: no, you are not fucking obliged to battle the fucking right on fucking social media, or go to where they are. Why make yourself miserable shouting at bots (who don't care) or trolls (who get off on your misery). Make your fucking social media enjoyable, FFS.

John Scalzi
@scalzi.com

There are SO MANY other ways to effectively fight the the fucking right than screaming into the social media void and making yourself feel as awful as these dickheads actually are. They want to exhaust you here so you feel helpless everywhere else. Fuck them. Conserve your joy, online and off.

116 reposts1.1K likes

Rob Kirby
@robkirbycomics.bsky.social

Everyone really should seriously consider not engaging whatsoever with trolls, bots and fascists online. It gets you nowhere. You will convince them of anything. Block and move on. I stopped arguing with strangers online several years ago and it has improved my life immensely.

Sarkat
@sarkat.bsky.social

I don’t really expect to convince them of anything, but I do worry about allowing their garbage to go unchallenged and become the dominant narrative that OTHER people see. It’s something I’ve been struggling with for the last decade😩

Gilbert
@tinpottop.bsky.social

If the platform was neutral then you'd have a fair concern. But most platforms aren't neutral. They're going to create the dominant narrative regardless of what you post. It's more important to starve the beast than to fight it since bystanders won't see you anyway.

Isengrim
@isengrim.bsky.social

Very reasonable. The dominant narrative is decided by the algorithm, which uses a number of metrics, including engagement. Challenging their post gives them engagement and tells algorithms to show them to more people making it more likely to become the dominant narrative.

John Scalzi
@scalzi.com

(If doing that stuff is fun for you, that's fine. It was fun for me until it wasn't, so now I don't. But the suggestion one *must* wallow in the mire because the mire is where the right likes to be, is nonsense. They can sit in their own shit. No one else is required to cover themselves in it.)

Joshua Zucker
@joshuazucker.bsky.social

Exactly. And they probably don’t really think what they’re saying anyway, as @kattenbarge.bsky.social points out: bsky.app/profile/katt... They just want twitter to be fun again.

Kat Tenbarge@kattenbarge.bsky.social

If people really believed that you needed to engage on conservative-dominated platforms to be effective they’d be active on Truth Social, Rumble, and Kick. They are not. They just don’t like X as much anymore and they want it to be your fault

SeasonalPun
@pixelfish.bsky.social

Same! After a while, I wearing of sharpening and shining my teefs on the hapless. Sometimes too, a lot of regular folks are mired in propaganda, disinfo, and the absolute weight of day to day living making info sorting ä chore. Maybe better to not amplify the bad takes & reduce the noise.

Nancy Nall Derringer
@nderringer.bsky.social

Respectfully, John, I am not exhausted, and will continue to draw attention to these freaks and ghouls, on social media and elsewhere. My joy is conserved and walled off from them, and while there may be other ways to fight them, this is one way. Among many. We all do what we can.