rant: #Justice4AtheistGirl

I highly suspect, that this blog post will be all over the place but I need to get this off my chest and I am positively pissed off about what happened in the Twitter world today.

So let’s start by adressing the obvious question: What did happen on Twitter today? Well a lot of things obviously but today was a dark day for the Twitter Atheist community because a big account for our side was suspended: I am talking about Atheist Girl (from now on AG) @iamAtheistGirl . Now AG didn’t have the following of say Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris but she was a fairly big fish in a small pond with 18.000 followers to be proud of and a lot of friendships within the community, one of which she had with me.

Now I am not saying that big accounts should automatically get a free pass. Not at all. What I am saying is, that she (and others who might be an endangered species as well) put hard work into building up the AG franchise. I can speak from personal experience, that getting 1000 followers was hard enough. If somebody took that away from me, I would be devastated, I would be infuriated and I’m gonna be honest I would probably cry.

While this is only a hobby of mine, it’s a part of me and it was no doubt a part of my dear friend. It’s not easy to get a following on Twitter and while it definitely shouldn’t it gets to you. It gets to your head, that you have all these people, who are interested in what you have to say. It gets to you, that you build these online friendships, that you share a laugh, that these people build you up, that you can discuss with them. You put work into it and when they take it away from you, you’re understandably pissed off and enraged how much Twitter sucks these days!

The issue is the following: Where do we draw the line? AG obviously had a great amount of detractors. Therefore it’s not unlikely, that people WILL report her. It really doesn’t take a genius to figure this out people! Again it is not my stance, that big accounts should get immunity, far from it. I do think however in her case, when it’s obvious to any objective observer, that she has put a lot of work into it, Twitter should be a little more cautious and should investigate further, instead of taking the reports of a few trolls and suspending her on those grounds ( as she says it happened, since she hasn’t been forwarned etc. ).  If it is this easy, then who is save anymore? Why should anyone even bother? I might as well delete my account at this point, because it’s only gonna be a matter of time, until a group of people gets together, files multiple reports against me and oops I’m gone. Twitter please please get your shit together!

For all those who might be unaware of it: My friend has got an backup account. I have been promoting her all day but here it is again:

@iamAtheistGirI

Goodbye from yours truly,

Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation

(Update: As of the 27th of June 2017 her account has luckily been restored. You can find her here: @iamAtheistGirl )