It’s one of those days where the sky is rumpled with clouds, and honestly, I don’t feel like writing today.
Days like that come along, rolling in, much like the clouds.
Last night I spied some open antisemitism on Spoutible, shared by someone I follow, no one questioning the tropes or the outlandish connections made in it.
Until me, of course.
Quite possible people didn’t see it. So I’ve shared it again, pointed it out, and it should be reported and hopefully removed. It read to me like another account that was previously removed for antisemitism, frankly, down to the justification that a big name on the other site posted it, which I don’t believe for a second.
But the open antisemitism, on a major Jewish holiday, no less, wasn’t the only thing. The pricklers are back.
Pricklers are accounts you start seeing in your feed you may not have really seen before. Suddenly they’re almost everywhere.
And then they start being just a little…irritating. A little rude, a little abraisive.
They sound almost like someone who would typically be on Spoutible, interested in equality and justice.
But don’t be fooled.
They will insert themselves, acting as though they are “defending” or “speaking up for” people who don’t actually need either. They often give themselves names that are little jokes to themselves as well.
I’m sure they think we don’t notice.
The idea is to cause friction where there is no friction with a sheen of plausible deniability. To enflame disagreements, or to pretend an exchange of ideas is a disagreement.
To create imaginary boundaries and accuse users of crossing them.
I’ll tell you, they’ve really refined their game, because it’s impossible to just be a regular troll on Spoutible.
But the idea is to splinter us.
To make the site feel uncomfortable, to make our interactions a little more friction-filled.
That is not who we are.
We are people who can disagree about ideas, we can disagree about ways forward, we can disagree about approaches.
We can have productive conversations and come to a resolution if not an understanding.
They don’t want that. We are weaker when we are torn apart.
But we won’t be. We’re a community.
We won’t allow them to needle us into being anything else.
Have a great Wednesday.
A Bit to Read 
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