Funny

I Went on a Twitter Rampage for #TheTriggering

Fellow Vancouverite and accomplished internet troll Lauren Southern started a hashtag called #TheTriggering. The idea is that every March 9th, everyone tweets out all their non-PC opinions and jokes at the same time under this hashtag in defense of free speech.

I’m usually not big on participating in the culture war, but what the heck? Might as well have fun with this hashtag while it lasts. I started with the most controversial statement I could think of:

Typing that, I noticed something strange. Even though #TheTriggering was the top trending hashtag, it wouldn’t auto-complete when I typed it. Other people noticed it too.

It’s strange that a company like Twitter would take a side in the culture war. After all, the harder the culture war rages, the more people flock to Twitter to complain about it.



Oh well, I just typed in the whole hashtag. Nice try, Twitter! Your disapproval only fuels my desire to spark controversy, which in turn drives more traffic to…Twitter. Wait, was that the plan all along?

Recalling that the hashtag is about free speech, I resolved to speak out for researchers who study controversial subjects and face backlash for even daring to ask the “wrong” questions.

Take THAT anti-science left!

Not content to merely participate in the culture war, I figured I’d comment on it on a meta level:

Having reached the point of meta-commentary, I realized I was scraping the bottom of the controversy barrel:

But then I thought of some more controversial things to say:

Yeah, take that modern art!

The anti-immigration right was not spared from my Twitter wrath:

This actually generated some pushback:

From there, I moved on to summarizing recent economic research:

Some people started objecting to the hashtag campaign by arguing that Twitter, as a private company, has every right to censor whoever it wants on its platform. I agree with their interpretation of property rights, but I still think that Twitter should not exercise its property rights in this way:

Lauren’s response was less measured:

I rounded off my rampage with a Mencken quote and a joke about grad school:

This reminded me that I am, in fact, in grad school, and I do, in fact, need to grade a stack of undergraduate midterms. End of rampage!