the worst

People say twitter brings out the worst in humanity. Well, ok, Bret Stephens said that, but it’s a message that’s been hinted at if not outright blasted through the platform after someone goes through a particularly bad time on twitter.

The worst in humanity is out there every day. Just read a paper, watch the news. It’s not always the big font headlines that spread the news that humanity sucks, but it’s in the margins, in the small print where local news stories like “man kills family” and “cop shoots dog” exist alongside “teacher grows town’s biggest tomato.” They’re run of the mill stories. They’re every day tales. They’re the worst of humanity. Calling someone a “bedbug” seems to pale in comparison to someone pushing a stranger in front of a subway.

Twitter does tend to bring out the trolls, the people who hide behind anime avatars or fake names, whose sole purpose on the site is to inflame and insult. But those people are generally trolls off twitter, too. It’s not bringing out the worst in them, it’s giving them a platform for their inherent vileness. That is their personality, on and off twitter. The worst of humanity exists offline, and to lay the blame on twitter for amplifying it is to be naive about what exists outside the confines of the internet.

The worst is this: a man who ran over another man and killed him because he thought he threw a golf ball at his car. Transgender women being forcibly dragged out of a bar because of who they are. Children being shot to death. Jeffrey Epstein. That’s the worst of humanity. It is…