In general, I'm very happy that I couldn't publish to the Internet unfiltered until long after I internalized "Never say or write anything in public that you wouldn't want to appear on the front page of the newspaper." I pretty much stay away from politics online, especially on anything like twitter that is public--especially any opinions that are nuanced and easily misconstrued.

I do have good professional reasons to be on twitter and I honestly don't have much inclination to have political arguments there. If I did, I'd probably get another pseudonymous handle but even that carries some risk that it could be connected to you in some way.

So who is this horrible girl on Twitter who’s destroying lives? Surely naming names in this case would be justified.

And this is my axe to grind - that these people exist and just one misconstrued, out-of-context quote and boom, career is over.

And the degree to which this social-media-background-check crap goes - just see a recent entry from jwz's blog about this[1]. I had little idea things had gone that far already.

Sure, play stupid games/get stupid prizes but we are all human and go through phases of self-discovery. Turning social media into a saccharine, superficial cat pics trading ground where everyone is fearful of losing friendships over, say, well-intentioned analysis and opinions seems like a pathetic outcome for humanity overall. Not to mention how easy it is to miss sarcasm or other thought subtleties that can't be easily conveyed on international multimedia social networks.

I agree with others who say HN is a refreshing exception to the toxic mess that is social media, though.

1:https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/02/enjoy-your-dystopia/