My First Twitter Trolling

I have survived my first Twitter trolling. Six days after I made a tweet about who I personally feel should not be running for the democratic presidential nomination, I noticed my app blowing up with notifications. When I went to the notifications tab, nothing was there. I got onto my computer and went to my notifications where I noticed that Twitter had applied some kind of filter to block a majority of updates. Had I not un-applied it, I wouldn't have known that a couple of incels had found my tweet, retweeted it, and screenshot it to put it on Facebook. All kinds of disrespectful comments were pouring in, threaded to my tweet and whenever it was retweeted. Most of them were attacking my identity as a fat, queer, trans person and had no relevance to the content I posted, content that had no relevance to them in the first place.

I blocked every single comment and retweet and reported the nastier ones but they just kept coming. Then they started trolling my other tweets as well leaving hateful and irrelevant comments. My sister started reporting the responses too to help increase the likelihood that their content would be removed. Just when I would think it was slowing up, another RT would happen bringing a fresh onslaught. After two hours I was exhausted. I couldn't keep blocking and reporting indefinitely. Every time I did I was forced to see what they had written. I also refused to delete my tweet because there was nothing wrong with it - I'm entitled to my opinions especially when they don't affect anyone else. I absolutely will not cow to people like this.

I ended up making my account private, which I'll keep for at least a week, and deleting the app off my phone to give myself some sense of sanity. A lot of writers I follow on Twitter write regularly about getting trolled, about their experiences with trolls and the unanticipated consequences but none of this prepared me for the reality. I wouldn't say I was hurt because their insults were steeped in ignorance. I also wouldn't say I was scared because I knew what I was up against - getting trolled on social media is inevitable if you are any sort of minority. It was like I was being slapped repeatedly. I knew it was going to be a slap, I knew there would be an infinite number of slaps, and didn't know when or if it would stop. The exhaustion is mostly from the lack of logic - this wasn't arguing or debating, just waves of crude personal insults for no reason other than that I exist.

The lack of logic is what's most difficult to explain to people who have never been trolled, especially people who aren't aware of or well versed in incel, MAGA, and TERF "ideology" (for lack of a better word). These people are incapable of logic and respecting others on a basic human level. They don't think for themselves and mindlessly consume whatever is put in front of them. I’ve seen countless clickbait articles about how empathy is on the decline but that seems to be just a matter of perception. People who think like internet trolls have always existed, the time is just ripe for them now because there is no way to check them. Had I entertained a single one of them, I would have been forced to explain my identity to someone who does not believe I am human, that I do not deserve dignity and respect, and that I do not deserve to live. There is no arguing with anyone who denies your humanity. 

There are no words I can write to describe what it feels like to be virtually face to face with someone who thinks you should die. This is something so many of us have felt, as queer people, as trans people, as fat people. It’s not exactly fear because I know that there is no immediate bodily threat. I guess it’s closer to desperation or hopelessness. We all know in theory these people exist but when they interact with you it removes any shadow of doubt that humans are capable of such virulent and irrational hate. While I would unequivocally punch a nazi in the face, the internet troll is more amorphous. They’re in front of you but also non-existent. So many of these people, from their accounts and photos look like regular white dudes who do regular white dude things - work in offices, have families, go to sports ball games - but they also spread hate from the secrecy of their phones.  

I don’t owe anyone any explanations about what I tweet or about who I am. If you have gotten to the end of this post, I will reward you with one mostly because I was sketching a future post about this topic before any of this happened. One troll “meant no disrespect” and wanted to know why I am wearing a “Nasty Woman” shirt in my avatar but identify as non-binary. That’s called a feminist reclamation. I wear that shirt because I’m reclaiming two words (along with several others like fat, slut, and witch) because it’s an easy way to display that I am a feminist and believe in equal rights. There is power in language, power that can can be wielded many ways. When we reclaim language, we show our oppressors that we are not afraid of their words and that the words they intend to keep us down, motivate us to persist. 

Dallas Symphony: Nielsen 5

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Dallas Symphony Orchestra
John Storgårds - conductor
Augustin Hadelich - violin

Haydn - Symphony No. 94 "Surprise"
Sibelius - Violin Concerto
Nielsen - Symphony No. 5

Full disclosure: every single time I've ever listened to Haydn 94 in my entire life I've fallen asleep only to be woken up by the timpani in the second movement. How dare you read me like that, Papa Haydn. I'll blame the fact that I had to speedwalk to the concert hall as to not be late for not falling asleep this time. It's a good thing I didn't fall asleep because this was the best part of the program. Storgårds conducted without a baton which indicated to me several levels of intimacy - between him and the musicians, between him and the music itself, and between him and the audience (or at least anyone who noticed a lack of baton). I found his conducting to be comforting and only displaying the intimacy required for Haydn, no more. He didn't micromanage, didn't try to make Haydn more than what he is, and this created a sort of equilibrium throughout the orchestra. The entire symphony had cohesion because dots were connected but I wasn't convinced anyone was aware of the larger picture. Classical-period music almost always has a vertical grace and a long horizontal lyricism - like a marionette of a ballerina en pointe. She's suspended from above, immune to gravity, and her movements can be as long as the puppeteer can move. Performances often lack one of those two qualities, in this case, it was the horizontal lyricism. At some point of preparation, keeping time in each beat is less important than macro-rhythm or making each section of the movement sound like a complete gesture. The performance garnered brief applause from me but definitely not the three bows the audience demanded with an instant standing ovation.

From the soloist's first note of the Sibelius I knew that we weren't going to be in for any sort of transformative experience tonight. Hadelich put the right notes in the right place at the right time but that was really about it. There were a few things that bothered me throughout the concerto. One was what I identified during the first note, that the soloist didn't seem to have any idea of timbral color and that it can be changed. This goes beyond vibrato and bow technique, beyond the resonance of the instrument. His body didn't resonate along with the violin. I could hear his sound hitting the back wall but it lacked depth and sincerity. The Sibelius to me is a stoically detached caricature of human emotion. It sprouted from some kind of genuine emotion and was then almost operatically exaggerated. This is why it works paired well with Haydn - for the different ways in which music can be emotionally detached. In fact, the second movement of the Sibelius could be played with the same grace as one would play Classical-period music. Between that and Sibelius's orchestrational moments where it sounds like hooking both hands into your sternum to wrench it apart, revealing rays of perfect golden light, this concerto could have been the perfect catalyst between the Haydn and the Neilsen. There was something disingenuous about the the entirety of the Sibelius, the second movement in particular. Maybe they were trying to make it something more than it was, a false gravitas. The concerto left me with nothing more than mild resentment.

Just when I thought the applause was waning, not only did the soloist come out for a third bow but then proceeded to play an encore (the audacity) of Paganini Caprice No. 24. Choices. I was so profoundly unimpressed I found myself losing respect for him on a basic human level. This wasn't necessary. This wasn't good. No one here needed this experience. From where I was seated I couldn't see the soloist during the concerto because he was blocked by the conductor but I could for the encore. The showboating! The grandstanding! The pained expression of the concertmaster who looked like he would prefer to not be present! I couldn't help myself. When the standing applause exploded at the end (predictably), I couldn't help but throw my head back in exasperation. Am I really asking so much for anyone else in the audience to be critical of what they're hearing? To entertain for a moment that perhaps this was not the best thing they've ever heard?

Nielsen's wind writing is like an old friend, one you always want to see simply because you enjoy your time together even if you're doing nothing. Like Sibelius and Haydn, I don't think Nielsen 5 should be more than it is. Much of that symphony is just effortless beauty. Nielsen is honest, musically honest and that has a certain simplicity that I appreciate. I didn't go into this concert too terribly familiar with Nielsen's symphonic writing. You can check out the wiki page for the symphony if you want historical context but to me the second movement just sounds like confusion (which is completely valid given world events at the time). It sounds like Nielsen likely had a great deal of internal struggle about emotional authenticity in music, translating experiences and thoughts to music on paper. The slow fugue near the end just wanders aimlessly until the winds enter; the winds are always Nielsen's sense of order and reason, when things seem to make sense to him again. Confusion is a valid emotion but maybe there's a little quiet existentialism? The symphony ended and I didn't quite know why we were there, like Nielsen couldn't adequately express exactly what he wanted, something that maybe could be expressed in a single glance and a sigh.

I don't think anyone should go to the symphony, or into any experience, really, and expect it to be the best thing they've ever experienced. As musicians, we should be similarly realistic in how we approach performances. Just because a piece is not profound or life-altering doesn't mean it has no value or doesn't deserve respect. Do we have a responsibility to portray this music accurately? Absolutely. We would be remiss if we only conveyed the outermost points of the emotional spectrum in our art because so much of life exists in the in-between. Sometimes music doesn't need to be about more than how a composer can smoothly blend the winds into a string texture like a gentle gradient of two colors maybe only five shades apart. Art that explores the emotional in-between is possibly more important, urging us to broaden our emotional range, to be truly attune to what we are feeling, even if what we feel seems unremarkable. Much of life is unremarkable. That does not make it any less worth living.