This TED Talk Focuses on How One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan of Twitter. It’s a very frustrating social media outlet filled with bullies and trolls. We’ve seen several celebrities bullied off of Twitter and the careers of people have been hurt or destroyed because of things that they’ve posted or things that they’ve been called out on.
With the rise of more and more people being negatively affected by what is posted on Twitter, I thought I’d share this interesting TED Talk by Jon Ronson, who talked about how one single tweet can ruin a persons life.
For the longest time Jon Ronson reveled in the fact that Twitter gave a voice to the voiceless ... the social media platform gave us all a chance to speak up and hit back at perceived injustice. But somewhere along the way, things took a turn. In this passionate, eloquent talk, Ronson explains how too often we end up behaving like a baying mob — and that it's time to rethink how we interact with others online.
He offers a lot of great insight, but one comment he made that stuck out for me was:
“We want to destroy people but not feel bad about it.”
Twitter offers that to people and these mobs who seem to enjoy destroying peoples lives. I’m able to relate to this because at one point there was an attack made on me on Twitter regarding a post that involved Chris Hardwick.
This mob of people made me feel like shit and it was during a time where I had a death in the family. My 13-year-old daughter even saw the things that these people were saying about me. Instead of engaging in a constructive conversation with me, people just wanted to tear me apart, destroy me, and make feel like shit. Well, it worked, and I didn’t even do or say anything wrong.
I was sick to my stomach for days over that. I couldn’t sleep, my anxiety levels were through the roof, and I sank into a deep depression. People are so quick to react to things and spew hate because they don’t share the same opinion as you, or they don’t like something that you say. They don’t think of the consequences of how this will affect the people they are attacking. They just sit behind the computer and phone screens making themselves feel better by bullying others.
It’s crazy how people just want to inflict pain on other people without giving it second thought. This TED Talk is a much watch for anyone who is on Twitter.
Watch it below and share your thoughts in the comment section.