Twitter vs Reality vs personal attacks

Hello all,

As an avid twitter user, I try to follow a wide range of people, from conservative to liberal, and from non-political to hyper-political. Often times there will be a spirited back and forth, especially with those who hold differing political views than I do.

However, when does a spirited exchange cross the line, and what are the consequences?

1. Repeated rejection of reality. Examples: human activity does not cause global warming, social security is broke, 9-11 was an inside job, NATO is bombing innocent Libyan civilians because it is racist/oil-grabbing. CONSEQUENCES: I will cease to respond. If the activity continues, I may un-follow.

2. Repeated rejection of reality followed up by ad-hominem personal attacks. Examples: @spiritofmadison termed me evil and cold hearted because I wished to make some minor fixes to the social security system. CONSEQUENCES: blocked.

I suspect my unfollowing activity might increase as hysterical and extremist political tweets multiply as we get closer to the 2012 general election. Disclaimer: I am an equal opportunity unfollower and blocker. Extreme non-sense and personal attack from the far left or far right get the same response.

See you on the tweeter!

Daryl Northrop

Which U.S. political party is the Dalai Lama interested in? The Green Party!

The Dalai Lama in a recent interview said that he would be interested in joining the Green Party in America, if we had one.

Oops.

Total media and messaging failure. The Dalai Lama did not know that the Green Party of the United States even existed. Well, thankfully we do exist, but this moment should be a wakeup call for everyone who considers themselves a member of the party.

We are not doing what we need to do when it comes to messaging and building name ID. Before you start whining about "we don't have enough money and time," just stop. I do not want to hear it. No political group, party, or candidate accomplished anything by whining about what they don't have, or what might be difficult to do.

As of today, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are free. They are not hard to use, and the people in your circle that you are already connected to will give your information about the Green Party much more credibility and weight than information from someone they do not know.

Get off the sidelines, and start talking about the Green Party! Advancing ideas you believe in is not only the right thing to do, but it is energizing and can be a lot of fun!

The tools are right there in front of you. All you have to do is pick them up!

The Green Party Twitterverse!

Hello citizens- If you have a Green Party related tweet and want other political supporters to know about it, here are the #hashtags to use:

#Greens
#gp
#greenparty
#gpus

Also, don't forget to follow the Green Party at http://twitter.com/gpus !

For those who are wonder, the hashtag #green seems to be primarily used for eco-news, green-living ideas, green products - it's not a bad tag to use when you have a broad-based political idea you would like to inject into primarily a non-political twitter group.

More later! Stay Green!

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Daryl Northrop