If you've been on Twitter for longer than 5 minutes, you've probably seen someone being a total arse on there. Maybe you just shake your head, and keep on scrolling. Maybe you reply to that person or corporate entity directly, crafting up a cutting reply calling them on their bullshit. These are both reasonable ways of handling this.
However, maybe you see some garbage take, and decide for yourself that you should publicly call out this account, make an example of what a total jackass this person and their take are. You should dunk the hell out of them, by reposting their content and adding your own snarky comment for comedic effect. God you're just so bloody good at this internet thing, you're destroying it out there. This could not possibly be a bad idea, right?
Stop!
This *is* probably a bad idea.
Signal boosting, as you may already know, is the act of using whatever platform you have to amplify somebody else's message. This is generally done to promote stuff like events, important messages, somebody's request for support, stuff like that. Signal boosting is therefore not inherently bad. But it can be done accidentally, or inadvertently. If you signal boost something bad, for example some white nationalist who done a racism, even if you're slamming the person for doing so and trying to make them look ridiculous, you are still boosting their original message.
I can sort of understand why people do this. Firstly, it sure can be satisfying to put somebody in their place can't it? You know they're wrong and you're damn well gonna make sure that they and everyone who follows you knows it, and that you've sure showed them. It feels kinda good to just fuckin own someone, right?
But that's not necessarily a good thing. In fact, it's often more harmful than doing nothing.
Now there are legit reasons to directly quote someone as part of your communications. The attempt may be to raise awareness of some garbage behaviour that needs addressing. Sometimes this is worth doing. Sometimes.
Honestly I'd suggest screenshots instead because they do not connect as directly to the account being discussed, and provide no algorithmic context or support for your target. They're also (ironically, as an image opposed to text) often easier to read due to how twitter often renders threads.
Or, possibly you're looking to shame this person into not being a living shitstain any more and think a well crafted put down is the most effective way of doing it. I'd like you to think for a minute about how many times you've seen this actually work. If you really think about it, I doubt this has been the case more than a couple of times. In which case, you cannot reasonably expect this is actually going to help.
But overwhelmingly, the impulse (and the incentivised response based on twitter's ecosystem) is to dunk publically.
How does this not help?
Do you even look at who you're boosting when you do this? Half of the time it's just some nobody with like 4 followers who's been on twitter for 2 weeks. And these accounts aren't generally people new to twitter, they're burner trolls and bad take factories who you are giving a voice they don't deserve. If somebody has less than 50 followers, why on earth would you think they're influential enough to be worth the effort of taking down. They're barely worth the effort to reply to unless you're doing so to support someone else they're treating badly. Pay attention to who you're boosting!
Don't retweet eggs, don't retweet losers with less than 10, 20, 50 followers, whatever (and that includes me right now, as I'm on a new account with a very minimal following). Don't boost trash that deserves to sink to the bottom of the twitter pile and rot there forever.
We shouldn't be signal boosting terrible people with garbage trash creature takes. It's like the opposite of no platforming people. We can see a person with horrible views trying to spread their awful ideas around IRL and don't really think it's great for a university to invite them along, but on the interwebs apparently it's a great idea to spread that shit all over the place so everyone sees it. This doesn't help. Like, at all.
And if you must dunk, do it in the replies section. Ratio them, don't give them more exposure.
Let's be honest, you're probably not even that funny. You can quote and RT these people and maybe you'll get a bunch of likes and people will RT your own tweets, but is it really worth it? I'm not that funny, and I don't think it'll help if I do it, so I don't do it. If you're gonna boost some white nationalist or terf or other jerkateer you'd damn well better craft the fucking Dark Side of The Moon of takedowns or you just amplified their message for nothing.
And that just doesn't seem worth it.
(Originally posted 22/04/21)