An Integrated System of Abuse

Great post from Jill Filipovic on Twitchy:

Twitchy may be one of the most powerful political platforms online, but its role as an organized harassment tool is almost never discussed. Founded in 2012 by conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, the site has half a dozen editors who troll Twitter for content to post; each post consists of a tweet or series of tweets along with some brief and often outraged commentary. Malkin sold Twitchy to Salem Media, a for-profit Christian company in 2013, but the religiosity of its new owners has not shifted its acidic content. (Malkin and several current Twitchy editors did not respond to multiple emails requesting comment, and Salem Media did not return emails and phone calls requesting comment)…

While Twitchy’s content is tweet aggregation, its purpose seems to be filling insatiable reader rage. Many of the tweets posted to Twitchy are put on there seemingly for the express purpose of demonstrating how stupid or evil Twitchy believes the tweeter to be (although the site occasionally posts tweets from allies, cheering them on for shutting down enemies). The Twitchy team embeds the tweets into the posts, making it easy for their users to click through and engage with the tweeter directly.

And “engage” they do.

Erik, of course, felt the brunt of Twitchy harassment back in the day. The existence, and clear purpose, of Twitchy is one of the reasons why I struggle to take seriously the hand-wringing of Decent Liberals about how the PC folks with the Black Lives Matter and the Humorless Feminism are going to ruin everything by creating a Backlash. Twitter has already been weaponized; while self-restraint is often a virtue, there’s nothing that liberals and leftists can do to un-weaponize it. There is no pending backlash that could be avoided by telling the feminists and minorities to be quiet, because the “backlash” isn’t a counter-attack; it’s a pre-emptive strike.