The Tweeting Experience Can be Improved

There are many ways in which one can improve one's Twitter experience. It is not valid just to say that Twitter is a divisive platform.

It is just what you allow it to be and there are many online resources, aimed at helping you with controlling what Twitter has to offer you, including some from Twitter itself - not to mention Twactiva's efforts.

In particular, it is important to know best practices for dealing with the 'baddies' of the net, trolls and bots.

There follows some good advice, links and information, that may help.

The devil has all the best songs

The devil has all the best songs - according to the founder of the Salvation Army - and we are faced with a similar dilemma. The right-wing groups appear to have all the best stories - the ones that grab attention, trend, get seen and talked about. We need to understand why - and why it is important that we do not simply pick up these stories, as they are pushed at us, and say NO - STOP - BAD - RUBBISH - HOW VILE!

At its most simple, this is because what you write in reply doesn't matter one bit... What matters is the FACT that you interacted. And the result of you interacting - is as reported earlier in the thread. You promote their views, and the poison spreads. They know this, and they use techniques to MAKE this happen, because it works.

Dead cat on the table

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/20/lynton-crosby-and-dead-cat-won-election-conservatives-labour-intellectually-lazy

Fore example, For example, it was the reason behind Mr Johnson's remarks, about making model buses, out of cardboard and it worked. Whilst serious #brexit raged around us, twitter made jokes for 48 hours about cardboard buses, because, Lynton Crosby was working for Johnson... A bit of a curate's egg ..

Silence is golden

So if you don't like part of their message - think carefully about promoting another part of it...

"There is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is NOT being talked about." - Oscar Wilde

And Oscar had it bang on the nail. Much as we instinctively want to scream back - or register for our friends that we are outraged, the MOST sensible thing to do is mute, blank, ignore, and do none of the things that register that we even noticed it. Walk on by........... Silence is golden...........

Choose your battles wisely.

So if we merely spend all our time refuted and negating what the #leave groups say, we do two things that harm us

We promote their voice & what they have to say We do not address our own issues, which are different and put OUR case across.

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again After the 2016 referendum, many wise marketing people pointed out the #remain campaign was both reactive (as above) & lacked emotional input. So, as many "start all over again" - we should try to do so more wisely. Keep your friends close.... As amateurs, perhaps, it's easiest to remember some basics. Think about who is basically on our side - and who is not.

Gratuitously insulting someone, because they annoy us in other ways, isn't helpful. Most of all - what do we ACTUALLY WANT TO SAY? This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship...

And then there are those annoying people, who voted #leave but changed their minds - should we be angry with them? Well I would argue, not in public - because, most of all, we do need to change minds and we will not change minds, if we abuse people, who are brave enough to stand up and be counted, as having changed theirs - nor if we talk about people, as if they can't read English - or abuse them generally (e.g. call them stupid).