Talking to ourselves

With social media, I think one thing we need to remember is that most of us, when we talk online, are talking to ourselves, and being heard by the world.

That is, if (for example) someone posts an accommodation need in a moment of anger, in the form of a tweet that says "fucking just do X it isn't so hard", they're mostly thinking about communicating/commiserating among their friends of similar disability, who already get it.

Inevitably, this tweet reaches someone, or multiple someones, who can't do X for ability reasons and resent being told that it "isn't so hard". In fact the writer never meant to speak to those people-- they never really imagined they were there. But those people *experience* it like they're being spoken to directly; they see this tweet pop up in their feed and it feels like someone just yelled into their face: "YOU PEOPLE WITH (X other disability) DON'T HAVE IT SO HARD. JUST DO THE THING, LOSER."

Which is a problem. When I'm speaking publicly, I should assume I'm speaking to everyone.

But also; people *need* venting spaces; they need to vent to groups of understanding peers. When everyone's on social media, their venting gets broadcast to people who were never meant to see it.

We need more private and semi-private spaces on the web, I think is what I'm getting at. More friends-only, followers-only, if-you-know-the-link-only spaces. Some of us also need to admit to ourselves that we have an addiction; that we need to wean ourselves off the dopamine cycle of feeding our thoughts to the world, and hoping for positive feedback.

We need to learn to cultivate deep trust relationships again. We need to remember that not everyone is entitled to an opinion on our innermost thoughts, and not everyone's opinion of us matters. We need to stop casting out lines that will only come back with poisoned bait.

We need to start talking to ourselves more.

(By which I mean, please for the love of Sobek, stop using Twitter. And cut back on fedi stuff, even, if you feel it's harming you.)