Note: Yes, another twitter post, but it’s not my fault (of course it is; no one makes me write about something I don’t want to write about, but since everyone makes excuses about how their volitional acts these days aren’t their fault, why not me?).

The New York Times Washington Deputy Bureau Chief, Jonathan Weisman, explains his decision to leave the twitters, and his 35,000 followers, behind.

The beginning of my end with Twitter came with both a frowny face emoticon from Ari Isaacman Bevacqua, one of The Times’s audience development experts, and a boilerplate email from Twitter:

“We reviewed the account and content reported and are unable to take action given that we could not determine a clear violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules) surrounding abusive behavior.”

For weeks, I had been barraged on Twitter by rank anti-Semitic comments, Nazi iconography of hooknosed Jews stabbing lovely Christians in the back, the gates of Auschwitz, and trails of dollar bills leading to ovens.

Welcome to social media, where nasty people get to play just like you.  There are two overarching points to be made here. The first is that there is no sanity test for purchasing a keyboard and internet access. Anybody can do it. Even you.

The second is that the world is filled with people who are deeply twisted, the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, racists, actual misogynists (as opposed to those women and allies inclined to call every male a misogyinst for not doing what feminists demand they do), etc.  Before social media, they were largely isolated, and kept their yaps shut to avoid public condemnation and shunning.

It’s not that they didn’t believe then what they believe now, but it’s a lot harder to be a nutjob when you’re by yourself. With social media, they can now find each other, and take comfort in the support of the similarly insane tribe. Yay, technology!

As a relatively high profile target, Weisman caught the attention of the nutjobs.  The downside to having a blue check next to your name on the twitters is that it makes nutjobs feel inclined to go after you because you are somehow important. Every silver lining has a cloud.

This onslaught of hate was more than Weisman wanted to take, so he did what empathetic folks are inclined to do. He sought official protection.

Then Ms. Bevacqua assembled the worst of the missives and images, forwarded them to Twitter and requested action. On Monday night, she was informed none would be forthcoming. The next morning, I logged on to see a new user calling me a “kike,” declaring that Jews should have their assets seized and hoping for a revival of the ovens.

I had enough. I proclaimed on Twitter that I would be leaving it behind — along with my 35,000 followers.

So Weisman had enough? That’s certainly his prerogative. Social media is supposed to be fun. If it stops being fun, stop engaging in it. The same button that turns it on also turns it off. You are free to push that button whenever you want.  And when you do, the horrible, disturbing twits from haters and nutjobs magically disappear.

But that really isn’t what anybody wants, now is it? What people want is to enjoy the fun of social media without having their world shattered by the twits of the haters.  Now there is nothing wrong with wanting this. You can block people. You can mute them. You can ignore them. Just because nutjobs try to push their way into your world doesn’t mean you have to look, or deal with them, or acknowledge their existence at all.

Aren’t there guidelines? Of course there are, and there is even a team of women whose job it is to rid the twitter of the Robert Stacy McCains, to decheck the Milos, to protect the feelings of women from words that contradict Meaghan Traynor.

Few read them, of course, but Twitter users agree to the company’s terms of service, and those terms are explicit on this matter:

Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.

And there is this:

Harassment: You may not incite or engage in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Some of the factors that we may consider when evaluating abusive behavior include: if a primary purpose of the reported account is to harass or send abusive messages to others; if the reported behavior is one-sided or includes threats; if the reported account is inciting others to harass another account; and if the reported account is sending harassing messages to an account from multiple accounts.

But when Weisman sought Twitter’s protections, he was met with silence.  Apparently he didn’t sufficiently self-identify as someone the Twitter Trust & Safety gals care enough about. As everyone knows, Jews are not marginalized. In fact, Jews are hated by social justice warriors, who are all for BDS, so if it wasn’t the neo-Nazis going after Weisman, it could just as easily have been the SJWs. Whatcha gonna do about them, Jon?

I have been encouraged to return to Twitter, and told that I should continue to fight, that my exit was cowardly, that I let the haters win. And I might. I miss the quick rush of a scan through my time line.

But the fact is, giving up one social media space wasn’t exactly martyrdom. It wasn’t much of a loss at all. I have found myself reading whole articles through The New York Times and Washington Post apps on my phone — imagine that. I can actually look at the profiles of people requesting to be my friend on Facebook to see if they are, in fact, trolls. If one slips through, I not only can “unfriend” him but can delete his posts. It feels liberating.

Of course it “wasn’t exactly martyrdom.” It was neither cowardly nor heroic to quit. It’s just social media. If you’re not having fun, walk away. Plus, you got a New York Times op-ed out of it. Whether your 35,000 twitter followers will miss you is unknown, but so what?