Happy new year!

Long thread.
Someone in or behind twitter gave me a "this account violated the twitter rules..." supposedly for this reply (image 1 at bottom of thread). I appealed with "A question is hate?" They upheld their decision with: "Our support team has

After spending a couple of days engaging with #DisruptTexts and its most vociferous Twitter defenders, here is what I've learned:

1. Many of its most outspoken defenders are also outspoken racists. Almost every one that I spoke to focused on my skin color and whatever stereotypes they could fabricate from it in their responses.

2. On a related note, their primary means of argument seems to be largely ad hominem. There was very little discussion of the actual issues. Instead, insults, insinuations, and mockery seemed to be the rules of the game.

3. I think this need to focus on ad hominem arises from the ideological rather than evidential nature of #DisruptTexts itself. There's a lot of social justice jargon and feeling used to support it, but no talk that I saw about student outcomes or efficacy.

4. Relatedly, there is a religious feel to the whole thing. Heresy is not to be reasoned with but rooted out and destroyed. Only the truly initiated understand the secret gnosis. The plain meaning of words is disregarded in favor of a mystical interpretation.

My friend @EduCelebrity has been doing a #YearInReview tweet thread (check it out), in which he relives some of his best tweets from 2020.

I’m opting to do a #YearInPreview thread where I predict what will happen over the next 12 months in education...here we go...

January:

Teachers come back to school (virtually or in-person) fired up and ready to implement some great new ideas and strategies as part of their New Year’s resolutions.

Mid-January:

All new ideas flamed out as teachers begin their summer countdown. #YearInPreview

February:

Valentine’s Day parties include students exchanging virtual cards with each other via their virtual Valentine’s Day boxes. Joey’s mom hires a professional web designer so Joey’s virtual box is the best in the class and puts pictures of it on Instagram. #YearInPreview

March:

Depressed that St. Patrick’s Day has been cancelled (again), teachers put Irish Cream in their morning Starbucks and get rewarded by admin for their creativity...just kidding, they get fired. #YearInPreview

April:

Test prep is in full swing. Teachers try to prepare students they’ve never actually met, and whom have never participated in online instruction for a test that doesn’t matter. Principal asks if she’s ever contacted the parents to which she replies with a middle finger.

People frustrated with the negative sides of Twitter sometimes ask me what they can do about it. Here's a thread with some ideas.

Whether you have 100 followers or a million, you can do something to help… 📢

1) Don't share the ugly stuff, not even to expose its ugliness, if it’s just powerless fools looking for attention. (If you just can’t help yourself, use a screenshot, never a link or RT.)

Do expose the ugly stuff from elected officials and others with power. Frame your tweets to be clear you are calling it out. And use a screenshot, not a link or RT, so you don’t send them any clicks of encouragement.

2) Don’t repeat the framing of the hate-mongers. If someone says, “all Ruritanians are terrorists”, do not reply, “no, Ruritanians are not terrorists”, because all you’re doing is repeating the connection between the word, “Ruritanian”, and “terrorist”.

3) Never share links to hateful headlines & clickbait fishing for outrage clicks. Don’t be a sucker. (If you just can’t help yourself, call it out with a screenshot, so you don’t encourage click-seeking media outlets to deliver more of the same.)

Merry Christmas! How’s your Christmas going? Here is a collection of random tweets from Indian Twitter that will do India proud. Thread 👇1/n

The run up to Christmas started with Chavhanke running his Christmas special series on conversions. 2/n

A few days before Christmas, a ‘dharmic’ influencer started a campaign about whether Hindus should celebrate Christmas. 3/n

Right-wing blog OpIndia meanwhile thought it was an opportune time to dig out a 10+ year old video of Zakir Naik on Christmas greetings. 4/n

No Christmas is complete without Indology enlightening his followers. In fact he does it every year on Christmas. 5/n

Ever feel like there is an “inner circle” of the 50 biggest finance/business Twitter accounts who all collude to give each other engagement?

Well, there actually is. Here’s how to join it:

First off, it’s not necessarily a group chat or a formal club.

But there is an unofficial group of the “big accounts” who all know each other and promote others in the group.

Joining is easier than you’d think.

There isn’t an entrance fee or anything like that.

The best way to join is to become known for one very specific thing that no one else is covering.

is the “self storage guy”

@Codie_Sanchez is the “boring business investor”

@Agazdecki is the “bootsrapper”

If you aren’t already known for something, no one will care about your vague takes. Almost no one gains a large following by starting out as a generalist.

If you have 1 major accomplishment or credential, don’t ever stop talking about it.

Seriously, don’t worry about annoying people. You have to be way more repetitive than you think to get your story across.