Bret Stephens on Quitting Twitter After Being Called ‘Bedbug’: ‘Analogizing People to Insects Is Always Wrong’

‘We should be the people on social media that we are in real life’

EXCERPT:
STEPHENS: "Yeah. I’m going to be careful with my words because I know these are going to be examined carefully. So I think Twitter brings out the worst in its users. It tends to bring out the worst in its users. Yesterday a professor at George Washington University described me as a bed bug or metaphorical bed bug just in the context of 'The New York Times' having a bed bug problem in our building. I think that kind of rhetoric is dehumanizing and totally unacceptable no matter where it comes from. So I wrote him a personal e-mail. I didn’t go to Twitter. I wrote a personal e-mail, which I think was very civil, saying that I didn’t appreciate it. I would welcome him to come to my home in New York, meet with my family, and see if he would call me a bed bug to my face because a lot of the things people say on social media aren’t the things they’re really prepared to say in one-on-one interactions.  I also copied his provost on the note. People are upset about this. I want to be clear. I had no intention whatsoever to get him in any kind of professional trouble, but it is the case that 'The New York Times' and other institutions that people should be aware, managers should be aware of the way in which their people, their professors or journalists, interact with the rest of the world. That’s certainly the case with me at 'The New York Times', my editors are always aware of what I’m saying and I’ve sometimes been called to account, rightly so. He then posted my e-mail on Twitter so people are free to go and look at what I had to say. All I would say is that using dehumanizing rhetoric like bed bugs or, you know, analogizing people to insects, is always wrong. We can do better. We should be the people on social media that we are in real life."

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