I kind of feel like a boxer who enjoys boxing, but who feels a little guilty about punching his opponents once he's outside the ring. Should I be arguing/teasing/winding people up like this? Is it wrong that I get a degree of pleasure from doing it?
Yet on the flipside I'm also thinking: "They chose to get into the ring. No one forced anyone to box. They were trying to punch me too."
So there's a mix of feeling. Of course, as ever with things you want to be balanced. It's good to debate ideas - and to have a bit of cheeky banter - but you don't want to cross the line into outright hostility. The problem though is defining that line, and also acknowledging that the line may be different according to circumstance.
Anyway, what got me thinking about this again was observing the state of affairs in China regarding the coronavirus. When you watch some of the extreme footage from China it's clear that many of the normal people there are enthusiastically - and believingly - going along with it all. The mindset is ingrained much more so than here. It made me think that things wouldn't be so bad in China if the people had more exposure to opposing viewpoints.
By challenging the narrative vocally, both online and in real life, you can break down the groupthink - or at least undermine it and lessen its forcefulness. So it's always worthwhile voicing opposition in this regard. Things would be much worse here in the UK too were there not an adequate counternarrative.
So returning to Twitter, as I deem lockdowns and the other coronavirus measures so egregious I tend to go much harder on the people that are pushing them. Again, I don't always feel good about how robust and blunt I've been with lockdown advocates, but in all honesty I genuinely feel things are better for it (at least in an overall sense).
Plus, I'm just tweeting, whereas these folk are actively abusing the basic rights of people. So it's hardly disproportionate.
Sometimes I feel I'm going too far, and that I enjoy my sparring with these opponents a little too much. This then leads me to reflect that perhaps I should turn over a new leaf and start being gentler with people. At the moment though I'm leaning towards the idea that I should keep up the good fight. As if it wasn't for me and others like me it'd be much more like China now.
(And finally, for the record, I should reemphasise that this doesn't mean that I think it's fine to just outright abuse people or be mean. I'm bad on Twitter - much less measured than I am on here - but I'm not that bad (I don't think 😬).
[If anyone want to gauge this for themselves feel free to visit my Twitter profile and click on the 'Tweets and replies'.]
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