"Why Did You Write This" & Other Visceral Reactions to Twitter Replies

Sometimes, people are rude to me online. When I consider my responses, I’m half-ashamed, half-proud. But never at the same time. At any given moment, I’m either 100% ashamed or 100% proud.

Men have been leaving rude comments on women’s tweets since the dawn of time. My own Twitter was no exception—the rude comments launched when the tweets did. For years, I convinced myself I would someday become immune to the comments. In fact, I thought social media would help me become less sensitive in general; that Twitter was just practice for the rest of my life. That I was building a thicker skin to would forever benefit me professionally, romantically, etc.

This…never panned out. The nice thing about social media is it takes time to build an audience, so you have some time to build your tolerance to hate mail. The bad thing about social media is that in my experience, time does not transform into tolerance. If it were true that online hate converted to thick skin, then Monica Lewinsky would not have cried one time since 1998. Idk, maybe she hasn’t. But I’m doubtful.

Now, there are different types of negative comments. Some are genuine criticism, for these, my anger is often just compensation for my own humiliation. The only thing worse than being wrong is knowing you’re wrong. Some comments are stupid or annoying or condescending or redundant or unnecessary or frustrating or assume uncomfortable familiarity. In this essay, though, I’m focused only on comments made in bad faith. When the likely intention is to make me feel bad.

At first, I really let these comments get to me. Because I took each one personally, I reacted in kind. I would publicly reply in my own defense, or even take my rage to the DMs (in messages I hope never surface; hopefully, Twitter’s data storage doesn’t really work anymore).

As the years passed, I started to read fewer comments. I hid everything I could, but I still can’t escape them all. On Instagram and TikTok, you’re not allowed to mute comments, which I find deeply immoral. And sometimes someone in my DMs will tell me they’re sorry about the comments, which I find deeply annoying. But to whatever extent I can avoid comments, I do.

I don’t react as often anymore, and I try to be more casual about it. If I can think of a way to turn a rude comment into humor, I do. This works about one in 20 times, which isn’t that much worse than my general success rate with jokes. On Twitter, I often write, “why did you write this” on comments I don’t like. It’s simple. It’s not too aggressive. It’s ambiguous. I can back out of confrontation if it seems like they were well-meaning.

But I can’t pretend I never let anger get the best of me. If Instagram serves me a particularly vicious comment when I’m already in a bad mood (which is only about 50% of the time), I’m likely to pounce. Instagram makes it too easy. I click on the offending commenter. I see their profile. I comment on their photos, “please stop harassing me.” Or something along those lines. I love to fantasize about exacting some kind of insane revenge (this is everyone’s favorite hobby, do quote me on that statistic). Thankfully, revenge is somewhat hard to put into practice, and I’m lazy.

I don’t know why I react so badly, especially since I’ve had six years to get used to the offending comments. I’m not winning hearts and minds. It doesn’t make me feel good. It’s almost compulsive, if I’m angry enough. Maybe there’s an element of thrill. Maybe I want to see if my comment can lead to a further backlash. Angry doesn’t feel good, but it does feel. Maybe there’s some kind of perverse dopamine burst I get from my own rage; the addict in me wants it to continue, rather than return to a sensationless present.

There is something addictive about anger. When I see someone else angry for no reason online, I’m often drawn in.

But when it happens to me, on my posts, it’s obviously far worse. Maybe because I’ve lost control of my emotions, I need to take the wheel as aggressively as I can. That is—I think—the whole point of anger. To ruin someone else’s experience because they’ve ruined yours.

And these comments do ruin my experience. Not just of the internet; of my own body. My reaction is physical. When a comment is nasty enough, anger bubbles up inside me. It’s not the sharp chest pain of enormous rage; it’s wider than it is deep. It’s as though there’s something gurgling beneath my skin on every surface of my body. But—because it’s every surface—to combat it feels futile. I wouldn’t know which area of my body to breathe into, even if I were someone who…did that. This shallow, wide rage the uncomfortable sensation of wanting to burst forth from my own skin, almost as though there’s an angrier being within me who would physically attack the object of my ire, but that being can’t, because my skin is blocks him (obviously, he’s a man. One of the many who’ve been inside me).

It’s not anger alone, though—it’s also shock. That a stranger took my joke as an invitation to be rude. I wasn’t bothering anyone; I was just minding my own business, posting a joke about my lackluster sex life. A comedian friend complaining about her reply guys once said, “I have never in my life scrolled past a tweet and felt the urge to leave an angry comment.” I feel the same way. Talking shit about tweets can be done in the group chat. When someone is rude in the comments of my tweet, it’s just a sign they have no friends.

And I know that. I know the people writing angry comments are friendless and alone. Or that there’s something else going on in their life that renders them unable to be kind. That if I only knew the reason, I’d forgive them instantly. On a logical level, of course I know men’s anger is steeped in misogyny. Of course I know reply guys are just envious that no one is reading their tweets. I know all this and more, and still, I haven’t gotten used to it.

But I don’t think I’m wholly irrational. I once complained to a boyfriend that a man had insulted my appearance in a TikTok comment. The boyfriend couldn’t believe I’d actually get offended by it. “How could you take that personally?” He asked me. “Well,” I replied, “I took it personally because it was directed…at me.”

These comments; they’re on my posts. They’re for me. It’s deeply disconcerting to know that strangers don’t like me. Without knowing me! Take me to dinner first, at least! I’ll give you plenty of reasons!

They’re also a reminder that I am putting my work out into the world. Nikki Haley once suggested that we get rid of all online anonymity. This—like most of Nikki’s ideas—is bad. It’s important that people be able to anonymously criticize institutions of power. I don’t consider myself a powerful person, but power is on a spectrum. I have an online platform. I don’t like when people reply to me rudely, but if I zoom out, I see the utility in comments, in general. It’s not that I think a person who receives ever asked for it—it’s that I think comments help us to debunk misinformation, point out biases, or tell me I have a big nose. And you don’t rise up high enough to escape criticism. The further you go, the more you get. Think about Donald Trump. Think about Taylor Swift. Think about how insane and unfair it is that I just lumped them together.

I know I won’t escape online criticism by getting better at being online. Just the opposite. The only way to escape it is to give up. So, if the criticism is bad for me, why don’t I?

Here, I suspect, is the true object of my anger: myself. I don’t even know the people who leave nasty comments on my tweets; there’s a limit to how angry I can be at a stranger. But I know that I’ve put myself in a position to receive their rage.

The question of why we continue to use social media, even though it harms us, is not a new one. Study after study after study after study has confirmed that social media is bad for us. But we continue to use it, which means there are benefits. I could list some: entertainment, connection, satisfaction in the knowledge that your ex’s fiance’s engagement ring is kinda gaudy. And I have to wonder if maybe my rage is another.

I’m not a fan of expressing rage too publicly; it makes other people uncomfortable. It’s an inappropriate use of someone else’s space. Feeling rage, though, is another story. Any number of unpleasant emotions provide information. Envy tells us what we want. Sadness tells us what matters to use. Boredom tells us to switch to a different season of Fargo. And rage paints a picture of what type of behavior we think is fair.

My online rage is for both me and the people who leave rude comments. I think it’s unjust that someone would say something nasty to me, but I also think it’s unjust that a person posting from a public account should expect nice comments only. That’s an awfully entitled way to use the internet. Thus, it stands to reason that I’m half-ashamed, half-proud of how I react to nasty online comments.

Ultimately, if you don’t want someone to write “why did you write this” under your response, your best bet is to not write at all. This is as true for the people who comment on my posts as it is for me. And when I think about my own anger in response to comments that my public posts invite, I’m reminded to be just a bit more careful about what I post online. Which is probably for the best.

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