Kirsten Powers is not happy today. She’s getting beaten down for a double standard against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Joe Biden. Here is her response:
MINI THREAD
I’ve considered responding to the complaints that I have a different standard for Kavanaugh than Biden (I don’t). But I know that nobody complaining here actually is interested in understanding my view. So it’s a waste of time.
— Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) May 3, 2020
I’ve hardly spent any time on Twitter in the last year. Just in a little bit of time I spent on Friday it was remarkable to see the level of dysfunction. And I’m talking about blue check people.
— Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) May 3, 2020
Obviously all the trolls and bots were working overtime but the people who are known people and even people that I know honestly need to work on their issues rather than working them out on Twitter.
I don’t have any problem with somebody raising issues around my position on Biden vis-à-vis Kavanaugh I would’ve happily explained for those who didn’t understand. But that’s not what the conservative swarm wanted.
They just wanted to rage. When I look back at how I used to tweet and I would be snarky and just try to win arguments it was 100% because I had issues to deal with.
I no longer have any need to do that or any interest in doing it. I’m also not going to indulge it other ppl. There are actually a lot of great people on Twitter who behave well and those are the people I’m going to interact with and everyone else is getting muted. THE END
— Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) May 3, 2020
I do think she has a point about the worst part of online social media interaction is that people employ sarcasm and snark instead of reason and logic to prove their point. At first it was a fun feature of social media, now it’s descended into a bunch of jerks insulting each other and no one actually arguing their positions rationally. BUT also, Powers is just using this as a cover to ignore her bad arguments. Ironically.
Another bad feature of social media is when someone focuses on their worst most irrational critics in order to ignore reasonable arguments that prove them wrong. That is what Powers is doing here.
UPDATE!!
I also wanted to note that there’s a claim out there that Powers deleted all her Kavanaugh tweets after being criticized. She responded to that claim here:
Last year when I decided to take a hiatus from Twitter bc I felt I was contributing to the toxic culture here, a social media expert friend set up an auto delete so I could start over. These tweets were not singled out and I stand by them. https://t.co/7P2IJNVrwa
— Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) May 3, 2020
That seems reasonable to me. If someone can prove that she deleted JUST those tweets after being called a hypocrite, I haven’t seen it yet….