Consequence is no coincidence
Lauryn Hill, “Lost Ones”
Navigating and negotiating the wilds of social media can be a fraught enterprise. The possibilities of finding a larger, aimable community are balanced against the genuine threat of hate speech and harassment. In the current climate of January 6th and other IRL acts of violence whose origins began with social media interactions, some the tough questions become more serious when deciding how to set boundaries and interact on social media. Many of these concerns are amplified when someone is working in an art form that intersects with various fan-cultures, such as comics. While most folks recognize there isn’t a “rule book,” I still believe that seeking models from people who’ve lived their values is important. Aubrey Hirsch is one such person, and she provides both practical and thoughtful consideration on how to respond to trolls, how to let humor lead, and how to find a way through the abyss of doom scrolling.
The Practicum
How do you want to curate your online persona? Is the idea of curation antithetical to your values?
Do you want to offer “trolls” an exit ramp from toxic conversations? Can you use humor to deflate their intentions?
Who are the models or the examples you can look to about how to behave on social media?
What do you do when things go bad?
How are you finding your people or your larger community on social media?
Steven Leyva: Well, thank you so much, Aubrey. It's such a pleasure to speak with you and be a part of Tough Questions from Mason Jar. One of the things I've been doing is getting to know your work a little bit over the past couple of weeks—and I still have some work to do—but I was so excited to see that you draw comics because I’m a huge nerd, and I love comics. So, one of the first things I wanted to start with is: What are some comics you're reading? What are some things you're into before we dive into the morass of social media?
Aubrey Hirsch: Yeah, sure. Well, I love to look at really anything I can get my hands on. I love to read The Nib. I think everything they publish is phenomenal. Same thing with The Lily from The Washington Post. They've been publishing comics in their perspective section, and a lot of them are really interesting feminist comics with such a wide variety of styles that I just love to read. And you know, specific artists I really like are Sarah Mirk, everything she does, I think, is so cool and interesting; Mattie Lubchansky, who publishes a lot in The Nib and does a lot of political stuff, I think they’re great; and you know, of course, I've been looking at Craig Thomson's Blankets.
SL: Yeah, yeah, and that’s dear to my heart, you know. I guess maybe we might call it auto fiction, for Blankets? You know, something between memoir and fiction. I love [Thomson’s] work, and I love Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and obviously everything Alison Bechdel makes, you know. And Chris Ware just for the geometric style, or something visually unusual.
So, one of the reasons why we wanted to talk with you is you've had some interesting experiences on the Internet, to put it mildly. And I wanted to start with this question: If you had to give an analogy for what it's like for a writer to navigate social media, what would you compare it to?
AH: Oh, man, that's such a good question. These are tough questions already! It would be very difficult for me to make that metaphor, because I really think it's different for everybody. I try to be really careful when I talk to people about social media, because often if I'm talking to people—especially students, whether they're in my own class or I'm visiting someone else's class—they want to talk about social media because it's such a big part of life, and it's a big part of platform building, and you know, finding your audience and finding your community. And I think it's something that agents look for more and more these days.
SL: Speak on it, speak on it!
AH: [Students] always ask me about it and I’m always really careful to say the most important thing to think about is protecting your mental health, and if it's not good and healthy for you to be on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, don't do it because it's not worth it. It's not gonna make or break. If you write an amazing book, it's not gonna take away your book deal [if you’re not online]. You know there are plenty of writers who are doing great and are fairly offline, and there's also ways you can put your work out there and kind of disengage. There are other spaces where you can find your community. I don't think it's something you need to do, but I do think that, for me, it's been really helpful. I often, only half-jokingly, will say that everything good that's happened to me, or my career, has happened to me because of Twitter, because there's a lot of helpful networking and finding opportunities and things like that. I don't know if that answers your question at all, because I just feel like [your relationship to social media] is a really personal thing.
SL: What strikes me about the way you're talking about it, is that it almost sounds like you're talking about a relationship with an entity, with a person. You know, if it's not healthy, cut it off, or negotiate it in a way that makes sense for you. Have boundaries the same way you would have boundaries with people. Michelle Filgate says instead of treating Twitter like a billboard, treat it like a cocktail party, which I thought was wise advice, except I'm terrible at a cocktail party!
AH: I think the double-edged sword of social media is that it's in some ways most helpful for marginalized communities, you know, women or LGBTQ people or underrepresented groups, because it's great for finding your people, but it's also the most harmful to those communities because then, when other people find you they can really bring it to your door.
SL: I want to ask you another question: How has writing in different genres—comics, essays, and stories—altered your experience of social media? It seems to me that each genre might have slightly different but overlapping communities. How have you had different experiences as you've moved among those different discourse communities of those different genres?
AH: I think I would say the biggest shift I've noticed is that people really like to share comics. I think more than stories and essays. And when I say people, I probably mean people outside of the literary community, because I do think the literary community generally is really good about supporting other writers and sharing things, and when they see something they're excited about they want to share it. But I think in the wider community it's harder to get people to read things that are longer. I think our brains have been reprogrammed by twenty-second videos and 280-character tweets, and everything being so small that sometimes when you open something, and you see the scroll bar it's like, “Oh, no, I'm out, I'm not reading all that. I'm happy for you, though, but I'm not reading that.”
SL: But I'll watch that TikTok all day long!
Aubery Hirsch: Exactly. I think comics are easier to digest because they tend to be shorter. And there's a visual component, so it can grab you. And they’re easier to share, like a panel from a comic that maybe says something interesting, or something that resonated with you. It’s easier than what’s often a paragraph of a story or an essay. I would say that's the main thing I've noticed: People like to share comics. I tend to get more feedback, you know, both positive and negative on comics than on other things I've written.
SL: That was going to be the next question that I asked, about that increased level of engagement. Have you faced any more sort of vitriol from folks engaging with your comics? Or has it been pretty ubiquitous across the different genres?
AH: I wouldn't say exclusively, but almost. It's close. There's been a couple of essays I've written that have gotten under the skin of certain people, but definitely the comics, and I think part of that is wider reach, just it moving outside of my community. Those are the people that I'm really talking to, you know, like those are the people who are gonna understand. And also those are the people who know me and know where I'm coming from and know, like my heart and give me a generous read of like, Okay, I see what you're doing here. Once you get outside of that, then you get people who will misunderstand you or misunderstand you on purpose, or just fundamentally disagree with what I'm saying. I write a lot about gender equality and LGBTQ issues, and a lot of people will then find your work and it’s like “I'm just not talking to you,” like “You're never going to think what I think, or anywhere near what I think. You're never going to hear what I'm saying with an open mind, so let’s not waste each other’s time.”
SL: You don’t need to be anybody’s straw person for their argument.
AH: Exactly, but those people are out there, and they find your work, and it makes them mad. And then they want to tell you about it.
SL: When you're talking about the way in which comics are being shared, I think about their relationship with poetry, in that comics are a kind of distillation, getting to the heart of the matter in fewer words, quick impact, all those sorts of things. But yeah, I can't imagine a 4-Chan thread being upset about a poem I wrote.
AH: Yeah, you never know.
SL: I don't. I mean, from your mouth to God's ears. I really love how some of the comics you work with are different from some sequential art. They're not like reading The Boondocks. It's not that kind of political. I love your piece, because I'm a parent, too, about the industry of breast milk, and breastfeeding, and how being told visually made it feel bodily in a way that an essay might not. What was it like to make that kind comic, one that's taking on a topical, immediate issue in that way?
Image: Woman drowning in baby’s milk bottle. Text: When you tell lactating parents there’s “no cost” to breastfeeding, what you mean is that their time, their work, and their physical and mental health have no value,
Panel from AH’s illustrated essay “The many many costs of breastfeeding.”
AH: It was great. I loved making that piece, and it was also very validating. There was the formula shortage, and it was this huge crisis, and I just kept seeing on Twitter over and over again these people, almost exclusively men, saying, “Good news, ladies, your body already makes the perfect food for your baby, and it's free.” And it really rankled me because it's just not true in so many ways, it's not true that it's free. It's not true that it works for everybody. It's not true that everybody's life accommodates it. It's not true that everybody's baby cooperates with their decisions about how they're gonna be fed. It's just not true. So I pitched that idea to Vox, and they were like, “Sounds great. But it's so topical. Can you get it to us in like four days?” Oh, my God, I never worked so fast in my life.
SL: That's like manga artist fast!
AH: But I felt really passionate about it, and it was one of those experiences where I was already angry. And then, when I started to do the research, I just got more and more angry. It is so much worse than I thought, and so it felt really good to put that all out there, and then put it into the world, and to hear from so many people who felt validated by it, particularly a lot of parents who had breastfed children and been like, “This is a lot of work.” It is a lot of work. It's a lot of time. It's not just like, “Oh, just do this thing. It's so easy.” I think our society presents it that way. Sometimes it's really not like that.
Then later, I did get a lot of backlash from that piece from a lot of people saying I didn't know what I was talking about, that I was a selfish monster, that I couldn't understand because I don't have kids and breastfeeding is not about the money. And it's not anybody's business, but I exclusively breastfeed two babies for like a total of two and a half years. And I do actually know what I'm talking about. It was kind of nice getting hate comments on that piece, because it was so easy to dismiss them and say, “These people, don't know me. They don't know my life. They don't know my journey. They don't know what they're talking about.” I felt really protected from it. It's a helpful experience to have. You can carry it forward to the next thing, where, even if what [online critics are] saying might make you feel a little insecure or vulnerable, you can remind yourself that you don't have to hear that. These people, they still don't know you. They still don't know your experience. They still don't know your journey. They're just talking, but you don't have to listen.
SL: Yeah, it seems really similar to the essay you wrote about being a woman on the Internet, similar to the people throwing anti-Semitic hate at you because of your last name. And I love what you said in that essay about how even though you’re not Jewish, no one should put up with all of that hate, that it was just a bunch of unthoughtful and really hateful push back. And it makes me think that some of those most important issues activate so much shame for people. Deep, deep shame, and they don't have a place to put it, you know, which is probably the most generous reading of [hate comments].
AH: That's kind of beautiful when you say it like that, you know.
SL: I mean, I'm trying to account for how there are just some assholes. But I wanted to ask you another question about the specifics of negotiating social media. I think a lot of people are trying to do the right thing. They're trying to do it right. They're trying to not get themselves ratioed. They're trying to show up for the people they care about. They're trying to be good allies. And when you have a post, or a Tweet, or a picture on Instagram, any of the social media that you use, and you see it's getting a lot of engagement and a lot of comments, positive and negative, how do you decide what to respond to and what to just let go?
AH: I would preface my answer by saying that I think this also is such a deeply personal decision. There's not a right answer. There's just what is the right answer for you. And sometimes it depends on the day, and it depends on how I'm feeling. It depends on where I am when I see it. Am I in the kitchen joking around with my boyfriend and feeling a little emboldened to say something cheeky? Am I in the line to pick up my kid at school, and I just don't have time, and I'm not ever going to go back and look at it again? My general thing is when people are saying nice things to me, I try to respond to thank them because it feels good, and it's nice that they do that. And like, you know, I want to say I appreciate you reading this or for sharing it, or for sharing your experience with me, or whatever the thing is. And the same thing if someone is legitimately looking for connection. If someone responds and says, I breastfed two kids, and it felt like this, then I want to say, “I see you.”
But whenever people are saying hateful things to me, I would say probably 99% of the time I just ignore it. Because, again, I just feel like that doesn't really have anything to do with me. It's by chance that I'm in the room with that content, but I don't need to engage with it, and I usually don't see a reason to. But every once in a while, you know, I will screenshot something, and black out the person's name and share it to say, “Here's the thing I'm experiencing,” or “Here's what I think about this.” In part I do this because it's helpful sometimes to blow off steam and vent about it, and also in part to show people that this is what happens. These things get buried a lot of times deep into your mentions, and people don't see them. And then you've had this experience where you've had this salacious week, where everyone's just saying terrible, terrible things at you, and it's like nobody knows, and that can feel really lonely and isolating sometimes, even if you have a pretty thick skin, which I think I do. It can still sometimes be hard to let them go. And then a lot of times the best thing to do when something has spread outside of your community, far outside, like once I had Ben Shapiro retweet something of mine and those 3 million people that follow Ben Shapiro and I are never going to have a real conversation, and so I just muted everything and was like, I don't need to know, like they're having their party, and I'm not invited, and I don't want to be invited. Sometimes the best thing to do is just turn it all off.
SL: There's something sort of odd almost, in that there's this public discourse around something you've made, so hyper-visible, and you're having this super isolating experience at the same time. And I'm sure that's a kind of dissonance. It’s not easy to negotiate. I think many people can understand someone praising a person for connection. You know it's almost an unambiguous sort of situation there, and then the abject hate is easily dismissed. But I wonder if you have experienced not an insignificant amount of stuff that's in the middle. Something where it’s a little off. And I wonder sometimes if it’s worth giving an exit ramp to some of those people, like, “Hey, I hear you disagree. I hear what you're saying, but this is what it is. I didn't really mean it that way.” Do you ever experience that kind of decision of who should get an exit ramp? How do you deal with those more gray moments?
AH: Yeah, I definitely do. I've done exactly what you're describing, and I've had both positive and negative experiences with it. I've had someone who will approach me with what seems like well-meaning criticism that maybe I disagree with and I will respond by saying something like, “Thank you for bringing that up. Here's what I was going for, here's what's in my mind.” And sometimes they will double down and become sort of vicious. And then I'm out. And sometimes they'll say, “Thank you. I understand what you're saying now.” Sometimes they'll still disagree, but they'll be able to do it in a polite way. I think that probably the most common example of this is the criticism that I will get sometimes from people on the left if I'm using gendered language that makes them feel like they're excluded, or that some people might feel excluded. And I am very sympathetic to that, and I work really hard in my work to be as inclusive as possible. To try to talk about people with a uterus, or lactating people rather than to automatically gender it. But because I do a lot of comics journalism, I am often hamstrung by the research available to me and the language of that research. So, for example, if I'm writing a comic about breastfeeding, I can say in my analysis, lactating people, but if the research is talking about mental health effects on women, there's not a lot that I can do about that because that's the sample group that was polled and who responded. And so in those panels, I'm constrained by what I have. So I will sometimes answer those people who don't like [the gendered language], say, “Well, if you read the whole thing, I think you might find it more inclusive than this singular panel suggests.” Or I will say, “I understand your frustration, but the samples that I have on incarcerated pregnant people are only women.” That's just what’s there. And a lot of times they'll say, like, “Okay, got it.” Sometimes they will say, “Well, you need to work harder to find better research.” Which is fair, but sometimes it's just not there, and I'm not a scientist. I'm not doing the research myself. I'm finding it. And then there are people who will say, “You should build that in, you should say, these were the only samples pulled,” and I understand that perspective. But it's challenging when you're working in a medium with a lot of constraints to wedge in—a lot of extra language is difficult.
SL: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Words are at a premium in a comic. I think of Scott Mcleod talking about space equaling time, and that can be communicated so easily. But the context of how language is gendered, that is not so easily handled in a panel.
AH: It’s tough, especially when you write about the same topics a lot like I do. That panel would be in like every comic. It would probably become slightly annoying and frustrating for people who follow my work.
SL: Yeah, it's such an interesting conversation about how to negotiate those things, because I think for some folks when met with that resistance, I think the response might be, “Well, I'm out. This is too much work. I didn't sign up for this.” And then, “Why does everyone hate me? Because I'm just trying to do the right thing,” and then, you get more shame that comes out. And so I wonder what fears you might have? Do you feel like sometimes, or worry, when you don't respond to something, that it might be seen as complicit? Are you ever afraid that you haven't—I hate to say it this way—performed the kind of allyship that will be legible to people? What are some concerns that you bring to that negotiation? And how do you work them out?
AH: I mean, the negativity I get from people who are far outside my community, that stuff I generally find more empowering than making me want to quit, because I feel good about making the right people angry. I think that's the plan. On the other hand, it is harder because I feel like the mission of my work is to try to use my voice in whatever way I can to fight for more equality and more inclusion. And so when people experience my work and they feel excluded, that doesn't feel good because it feels like I missed. But at the same time, communities are made up of individuals, and not everyone is going to experience your work in the same way, and it would be an impossible task to write something that no one could feel hurt by, or offended by, or excluded, or not seen by. And so, I feel like my goal is phenomenally paralyzing. I can already see the tweets, so I will not write about it, or I will not write about it in that way, or I will try to find a different way to approach it, and that is also not a good feeling. But again, because you really don't want to hurt the people you feel are your community, you're trying to ally with them, but you also have to do the work, you have to keep doing the work, and so that's where I try to live—in the space of acknowledging it. Understanding that it's not my goal [to anger people], always trying to be better, and allowing myself to still do the work.
SL: I think that portion of it, that big umbrella idea of continuing to do the work is something most people can understand. I think where the difficulty sometimes arises is where that work is ill-defined. If what the work is, is something you wrestle with. I think you're right. Everyone has to have that personal journey of “How am I gonna negotiate this?” and then live with it.
I mentioned Alison Bechdel, and you know sometimes even in the classroom I teach at the University of Baltimore, I have to decide how I’m going to talk about the title for her comic strip, where the Bechdel Test originated. And that’s not me being coy, if I had a white student who wanted to talk about Jay Z and Kanye's song about being in Paris, would I want them saying the title in the classroom? I guess what I'm trying to say is that the mission, I think, is legible when it's most big, and it's most difficult when we're thinking, “Should I say this word? Should I make this tweet? Should I respond to this?” It's actually very small. And I often think that a lot of people worry about the small. They worry about the “I'm gonna make one small mistake and then it's over. It'll be over.” But it is almost never true. Well, sometimes you write a tweet about being at the gym, and people lose their minds.
AH: I think our brains are so good at holding on to negativity. If you have a tweet, like one that went beyond viral, and 99% of people were in solidarity with it—saying, “This is funny,” or “This happened to me,” or, “Good job,”—but it's the one or two that say negative, terrible things that’s so much easier for our brains to grab onto. I think that's part of what can make social media feel like such a toxic environment. You're always going to get a mix of people. I could show you my mentions right now, and it's probably like 90% people upset that I use “lactating people” in the breastfeeding comic. And then, like 5% people upset that I say “women” in some of the panels who feel like that's exclusive language. And you can't make it make sense. You have to take in what's useful to you and leave what's not useful. And for me, what's useful is valid criticism that I feel I can learn from, and compliments.
SL: Are you a Star Wars fan at all?
AH: Yeah!
SL: When I read that portion of your essay I was like, “This is her Han Solo moment.” You know why people are upset, get on board with it! Some people just want to be mad.
I had another question, and I want to be mindful of your time, but you mentioned some really positive experiences or beneficial impact that being on social media has had. Could you give specific examples of that? I know you said more broadly that everything good is happening, but what are those beneficial things that have happened because of Twitter?
AH: Well, first of all, definitely finding my audience and my people, like the people who read my work and feel it’s helpful, you know, or empowering, or illuminating, because that's the goal, you know, you want to be in the conversation and talking about things that are important to you. So that's first and foremost. But also I've had editors—like my editor from Vox—see a comic that I made for the Rumpus and say, “Would you like to make comics for us?” and I was like, “Obviously, yes.” And then my editor from Time saw one of my comics in Vox, and was like, “Would you like to make comics for Time?” And for sure, it's possible they might have seen my work without me being on social media, maybe they would have emailed me instead of DMing me on Twitter, but I have no idea. And the same thing with media requests, like a lot of podcast requests I've gotten have come through Twitter. I think people can get a sense of my personality a bit on Twitter and sometimes I will tweet something that I think I'm just venting, and someone that I've worked with before will email me and say, “Do you want to write an essay about that for us?” All of those things have been ways that Twitter has helped my career.
SL: I think we often underestimate who's watching. And then what often happens, like on a much smaller scale, but someone will say, “Oh, you know, I read this thing you wrote and I've been thinking about it for a long time.” I'm like that's great, but also, I had no idea. This is somebody I know, like I went to lunch with you yesterday, and that's often a little head spinning for me. And I have found there are people who actively offer a solicitation, ask questions, engagements, and not insignificant relationships can be formed because of that, you know?
AH: Yeah, yeah, I think if it's an okay space for you to be in, there's potential for [social media] to be really helpful. But again, if it's not a safe or comfortable space to begin, then it's not going to do any good and it's not worth it. And people do great without it. But it has been very helpful for me.
SL: Can I ask you why you decided to remain on Twitter? Other people may have felt, in the wake of Elon Musk or other situations, that it’s not the place for them anymore. I gotta say, personally, there's the question of how am I supposed to feel when someone who’s spent a decade building their brand, and reaping all of the benefits that have happened, now conveniently says, “Now this is it, it's over. I'm out.” I'm just curious why you decided to continue.
AH: Well, I don't know that I feel like it's a decision that happened at one time, I would say, I think it's an ongoing calculus around it, is kind of how I look at it. I'm still kind of deciding if that makes sense, there have been moments—like when Musk said no one can post links to other social media sites. No one can talk about other social media— that I remember being like, now that's really getting fascist, you can't do that. But then it got immediately rescinded within a few hours. I definitely feel in part the argument to not just leave a vacuum for only terrible people to fill makes sense to me. I've also just been looking at people whose guidance I admire and seeing what's going on with them. And a lot of the people who take that role in my life have stayed. I feel like it's really where I have the biggest platform and can connect with the most people, and I feel there's value in that, you know, even if I do find Musk himself problematic and a lot of things that are happening in the platform to be problematic, I guess I'm maybe trying to do some kind of good/evil balance. I feel like my role can still be a net positive in the universe by being there. I don't know if that's true or not. It's scary to think about losing that platform, losing that community and those connections I've built, because I have worked really hard for that. And it's scary to think about just deleting all of that. (A note from Aubrey: The space has changed so much since January, and I no longer agree with a lot of the things I said about it back then! For one thing, I have removed myself from Twitter except to post links to new work. I no longer read twitter or post jokes, comments, etc. If I write something new, I drop a link and then I bail. For me, the last straw was Musk monetizing hate accounts. I just couldn't justify being there anymore, knowing that my reading tweets was putting money into the pockets of people I find despicable.)
SL: Yeah, all the newsletters in the world can’t replace that, you know. I don't think your sub-stack could be fired. I mean. I was born in ‘82, I'm 40, you know. Like I was so resistant.
AH: Hey, same!
SL: Hey, hey, hey, what's up! That's wild! But I was so resistant [to social media] early and thought, This isn't for me, particularly with Twitter, and I think I was at like 200-300 followers for a very long time. And you know then I tried to take it more seriously in the process to get my first book published and I could not deny the value in that. People did reach out and ask, “Would you like to do some poems for us?” or, “Hey, this is a good place to send stuff,” and then [my following] grew. It's not tens of thousands or anything like that, but it became a space where I had to acknowledge its value was practical and not theoretical. That has happened enough times for me to feel like there's an ongoing value there, and then I guess when you’re not uber-famous on social media, you can try to avoid some of that give and take.
AH: I guess famous is a relative term, but I don't think of myself as famous since I don't have a huge account. I'm not super famous. It's just, you never know where your weird thing is going to get picked up. But it's helpful for networking and connections and all that stuff, but also because I do a lot of cultural criticism, it's helpful for inspiration. I wouldn't have written that comic about the cost of breastfeeding if I hadn't seen all those tweets. I did another one for Vox about the danger of treating women's body parts like fast fashion, and it was because I kept seeing articles that were like, “Big butts are out, abs are in.” and I'm like what? You can't just remove a part of your body? What are we doing? So if I was not on Twitter, I probably wouldn't have written those pieces. I'm glad I did so. And I get to wrestle with that, too.
SL: Yeah, I think anything that becomes that adjacent to the social sciences, you know in that way it’s a laboratory. Especially Twitter and Facebook, those two in particular. Who's someone you think is working in comics specifically that you think negotiates social media well? Is there somebody for whom you look at and think they do Twitter in a way that that is admirable, or might be a model for other folks?
AH: Yeah. Mattie Lubchansky, that I mentioned before. They got a lot of Internet hate and managed to turn a lot of it into really funny jokes just by pointing out the absurdity. And I really appreciate that because I feel like there’s an acknowledgment of what’s coming in, and then putting it out as something totally different. I really appreciate that it’s hard sometimes to clap back at this stuff, because a lot of times it makes it worse. And so there’s bravery, I think, in approaching it that way.
SL: For sure. One of my favorite folks is Gail Simone, who kind of does that very well, and one thing that Mattie and Gail share is that they're funny, you know. And what if you aren’t? What if you just aren't? Then that option to sort of put that vitriol in the meat grinder and turn it into Rumpelstiltskin gold, not to mix metaphors, isn’t readily at hand. You may have to find a different way to negotiate that, like we were saying before. But yeah, humor is something that I think the outside audience really appreciates, and it's easy to admire, but hard to imitate.
AH: I think that's true. I think it’s helpful. Absurdity is such a great answer to hate, because there's nowhere to go. But I think it's also helpful if like me, all of my social media has always been about a persona, as the writer and I don't do personal stuff. Like if you look at my Instagram, there are no pictures of my kids, there are no pictures of me. I don't do that kind of thing. It's just professional stuff, and I think about my Twitter similarly, except part of what I try to do on Twitter is make it feel accessible, and like collegial, while I'm still really protecting my own experience and my own privacy. So there's Twitter Aubrey, who exists in one way, and is like her own thing, and then there's me, and so people can kind of say what they like to about my Twitter persona, and I don't necessarily have to feel like they're talking to or about me, and that has been healthy for me, to have a kind of dissociation from it. Like that is part of my job. That's my office. That's who I am on the Internet and then there's who I am not on the Internet.
SL: Yeah, I'm not trying to speak in wild generalizations, but I think folks who are about maybe 10 years younger than us grew up more with the idea of a curated persona online. The curation of an online persona is normative to them. And I feel like I've worked really hard to be the same person everywhere. Who I am at work is who I am with my kids is who I am at a conference. That sincerity is so deeply important to me. That idea of curating a persona was very, very difficult for me to reconcile. And like we were saying before, everyone does it the way that makes sense for them. There's no right way to do it. But you know as much as I would love for my Twitter to just be poems I publish and speaking engagements, it's filled with toy pictures. It's filled with ridiculousness. Anime gifs. I'm from Louisiana. Synthesis is our business. If you're gonna be a part of something online, you gotta rock with all of it.
AH: I mean, mine's still selling it, because, not to get too behind the curtain here, but that's part of having an engaging Twitter feed is making it feel silly, you know? Personable. People like that. People want to feel like they know you, right? It's just Twitter Aubrey that they know, if that makes sense. [My persona] doesn't totally map onto the full human person I feel like I am in the world. But that's important for me to make it a place where I can take care of my mental health, because otherwise I don't know how people can talk really sincerely about their wives and their kids. And then you're in some ways offering that up as artillery for people, you know, and I mean, I admire it. I think it's a great act of bravery that I can't commit.
SL: I think, in this, you know, everyone is establishing certain kinds of boundaries. One boundary that I have for me is I don't talk about my students at all. I mean I'm not losing my job for any of you all. I don't complain about students. I don't talk about student work, except to say if a student has something published. I try to be a megaphone for them, and I think that is appropriate. But that's just a hard and fast rule. So there's a kind of curation there, because in the faculty break room, I don't have that boundary.
AH: Yeah, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I also like to think of myself as a private person, and I want to extend to everyone around me that same courtesy of what I would want. So I won't ever tweet anything about my partner without showing it to him, without saying something like, “Is this okay?” And I don't really tweet anything about my kids that is personal, like I will say that I have kids, but I won't talk about them in any kind of specific way. It's actually really funny, because I've worked so hard on that since they were born, there aren’t pictures of them on the Internet. Their names are not on the Internet. I don't want people knowing that stuff. And my son came home from school the other day and for the first time, he said, “Mom, I looked you up on my school computer.” And I was like, “Oh, my God!” My heart stopped. And then he said, “Yeah. And then I looked up myself, and there was nothing.” I thought, I probably need to talk about my kids more, like they'll be in therapy one day and say, “I looked at my mom's Instagram, and it's like I don't exist.” I've been working so hard to let them make their own presence on the Internet when they're ready because that was a gift that was given to us. We didn't have our baby pictures and awkward school photos on the Internet and I am so grateful every day.
SL: I’m so aware now that I didn't live in a time as a child in which anything I was doing might end up recorded as video. And this past summer, two graduate students of mine got married, not to each other, but two separate weddings that my partner and I went to. And my partner asked me during the reception, “Hey? Are you not dancing because of me?” because I tend to like to dance a little bit more than she does. And I said, “Well, not wholly.” I was a little bit aware that I'm at a student's wedding in which someone might pull up their phone and record me, and the context of that might end up skewed in some weird way. Not that I think I would behave in some way that I think would be inappropriate, so I was just reserved. And then later I went to a writing retreat where I was faculty, and I was there with a friend who I knew. We were the only two Black faculty there, and it was last night. They throw a big party, everybody's dancing, and there’s a nice range of ages. People in their sixties. People in their fifties, forties. All adults having a good time. And I'm telling the same story to my friend, like, “Hey, I went to these weddings,” you know, and she was DJing for the party, and I said, “Okay, look. Maybe I'm being a little prudish. If you put on this certain song, I’ll dance.” And she did, and I got up and danced, and someone immediately recorded it. Someone immediately, within seconds of me sitting down, circled back and said like, “Look how good of a time you're having!” See? Never again!
AH: Oh, my God that makes me want to die. I hate everything about that story.
SL: We don't have the gift of not being surveilled. But then, like I'm sure sometimes your kids may have been, but certainly my kids have been like, “Dad, Dad, take a video of me!”
AH: Yeah, there's this app called Cluster, where you can invite groups of people with a special link. They have to have a password, and then family can see pictures you don't put on Facebook, Instagram, etc. So I put them there, and I will take their video and put it on there, but lately, he asked a co-teacher at my son's school to Google me and he told him, “Do you know your mom is kind of famous on the Internet? She has a lot of followers.” And so now he will say, like, “Can you send this to your followers?” For now, I can say sure and put it on Cluster and it's not a thing, but you never know if you're doing it right. My hope is that someday he'll be grateful that I didn't put all that stuff on the Internet.
SL: Well, the poet Toi Derricotte says the gift we get is that we get children who forgive us. So, what advice would you give to emerging writers regarding how to negotiate social media? I recognize that as writers, we're sort of notoriously bad at advice. But what I really mean by that question is, what's something practical that you could offer to emerging writers thinking about how to negotiate social media?
AH: Well, you know, first and foremost, as I've been saying, protect yourself and your mental health, because if you don’t, you're not going to do good work. So that's the most important thing. And beyond that, it's tough because it is so personal. But I try to make it as practical as I can. I would say in the beginning, follow everybody who seems like maybe they're your people, like if you follow someone and you're enjoying their tweets, go and see who they’re following. Follow all those people that seem relevant, and maybe they're also writers, or whatever the thing is. And then just don't hesitate to follow a million people. Don't worry about it. People will talk about their ratio, like meaning their follower to following, or whatever, especially in the beginning, when you're trying to build your platform. You're just looking for your people, and sometimes you have to do a lot of sifting. And then, if someone you follow is tweeting things that are not adding value to your life, unfollow them. It doesn't have to be that deep. And then eventually you kind of get what you're seeing to the place where you want it to be. And then I think the people you kind of vibe with are more likely to kind of vibe with you, right? And then also, to not worry too much about numbers and things like that, especially in the beginning, because it takes so long, like you had 300 followers for a long time. But at a certain point, it kind of takes on a momentum of its own and people find you, and then what you have to be worried about is like, “Who am I talking to?” You still feel like you’re talking to those 500 people who you've curated to be your community, and then you look at your follower count, and it's not 500 people, it's 7,000 people, and you're like, “Okay, so like, let me notice that, and let me think about what I want to be saying out loud to all of these people.” So, I think it's good to not obsess about it in terms of numbers indicating your value in the community or your value as a writer. But I do think it's good to notice things, and then make sure that you've positioned yourself within those numbers where you want to be. And if you're not where you want to be, then change it. Make your account private, or soft block a bunch of people who you don't know, or you don't know what they're coming to you for, or go back on another following spree and try and just shift your algorithm because it's gone kinda weird and you don't like what you're seeing. Try making it again another way. I think it's good to be thoughtful, but not obsessive.
SL: Yeah, it almost sounds like there's some, you know, strategic ways that we can engage, right? So we won't set ourselves up for failure, but won't prevent us from accessing those benefits. It just sounds wise to me. Okay. So, one more question. What are some of the obvious pitfalls of being on social media? And what are some of the ones that are less obvious?
AH: I mean, obvious pitfalls: We all say dumb shit. That's just being a person. And you're gonna say something dumb, or people always misread you. Sometimes you're just gonna say something that's dumb or that's really open to being misread in a way that is not gonna feel good. And people are gonna tell you, and you're going to be like, “I really did fuck that up.” And I think it's good, obviously, to try to avoid that. But it's also good to just know that it happens. Everyone is a person, and everybody fucks up and makes mistakes. And at some point you're gonna feel, even if it's not true, like you're the main character of the day. And if you really mess something up, you gotta take responsibility and fix or delete it. So that it’s not out there making people feel bad, or however you want to handle it. But I think that's an obvious pit. All of social media is just fucking something up.
SL: Yeah, so it's gonna happen, is what you’re saying.
AH: I just think we all sometimes say something that's dumb. And I think another obvious pitfall, especially if you're a woman, or a person of color, or an LGBTQ person, is that people are gonna be mad at you simply for existing and taking up space and taking up oxygen and saying things that are on your mind. And they're gonna feel like the fact that you said something is license for them to do whatever they want, like say terrible stuff to you. Threaten you with bodily harm, sexual violence, send you unsolicited pornography. Sadly, this is the world that we live in. We haven't quite figured out, I think, how to administer appropriate consequences for these kinds of things. And so people get really emboldened. And again, they feel like, “Well, then, you shouldn't be taking up so much space if you don't want that.” I think it's good to be armored against that before you go in, and again, fix it if it's happening and it's not making you feel good. Change something.
SL: Isn’t it interesting that it’s not a matter of proximity? Like, the fact that these people don't spend enough time around women, or don't spend enough time around people of color, or don't know any LQBTQ+ folks. It's like proximity doesn't matter. I mean, I live in a majority Black city in Baltimore. Here, you’re in proximity to Black people all the time. What’s happening is you don't need them for anything. You don't have any kind of way in which it's like, “Oh, my friend the barista, my friend the housekeeper.” Like you aren’t friends, and I think that that simulacra of proximity on the Internet, is just all kind of skewed. So, what are some less obvious pitfalls?
AH: I think you know there's always a danger of violating your own boundaries because you're feeling emboldened in whatever way, or it seems innocuous at the time, and I think it can be difficult to stay vigilant if boundaries are something that are important to your social media experience, like they are for me. And I get to a place quite often where I feel like I'm keeping all these boundaries and working really hard to keep everything in place, so that nothing comes at me but, this is so dumb, other people say what they like, or do what they like, or they post a picture where they look lovely, and I think that's cool, and I like it. Why can't I do that? Just like, why don’t I feel like I can do that? And no one's stopping me but me, you know. And so then I will [post something personal], and I will regret it almost immediately every time. That's why I don't do that, because, like these five people that you feel like are your friends are now getting a little creepy in the DMs. And you're like, “Oh, I wish I didn't know that about their brain.”
And then I would say, on the other side is the less obvious pitfall that you will second guess everything, like you will start to write the tweet, and you will hear the voices already of everyone's problem with what you're gonna say, or what you're gonna to write about. And then you feel like, “forget it,” you know. I’m just not gonna say anything, and I think those are both like maybe things I hadn't thought about as I was building my platform.
SL: I think many people who use social media have had that experience of typing out a tweet and not sending it, and being like, “I'm very glad I didn't do that,” or “I'm glad I took a breath,” or those sorts of things. There are ways, I think, that social media can suggest that something is very urgent when it really isn't.
AH: Yeah, that's really true. Like it feels like you got to get your Kevin McCarthy Tweet in there now, because you know everyone's doing the Kevin McCarthy jokes and you're gonna miss it.
SL: I mean, that is the degree to which one experiences FOMO. I have seen many people who have talked about this topic or some version of it, like, how do you, even in your own life, kind of deal with the feeling of “Am I missing out?” and, “Am I irrelevant in some way?” And I tell you what, ain’t no tweet in the world going to resolve that for anyone, and the blessing and the curse of the Internet is that there is always more. There's always something else, you know.
AH: Honestly, if Twitter ever became problematic for my mental health, I would absolutely remain as a lurker, just for the jokes, because the jokes are so good.
SL: Oh, my gosh! I mean not to go down this rabbit hole. But we, you know, when Del Curry, Steph Curry's Father, was getting a divorce from Steph Curry's Mom, people were talking about that. And there was a hilarious thread of someone basically saying, “You don’t know what it’s like trying to date right now. You don’t want to be out here. You don’t want to be out here with this.” I laughed for days. For days! Like, I got married pretty young and never had to date online, you know. It’s like that. But I was just rolling. Yeah, that was so funny.
AH: I mean, Twitter, really, it's like 1 million monkeys. It's like the literal 1 million monkeys with 1 million typewriters. Except it's 100 million. I don't know how many people are on Twitter, but 100 million monkeys with 100 million typewriters. And every day someone writes the perfect joke. The one that I think about all the time, and I laugh every time I think about it, is when Penguin Random House was doing their merger, and somebody shared a screenshot of the headline, which was “Random House to acquire Penguin,” and they just said, “I hope it's my house.” And like, it’s perfect. I can write for a million years, and I would never write anything that perfect.
SL: I think it's, and maybe this is a good place for us to end, it's often very easy, and again very legible for us to talk about the ways in which things can go south and go left. You know, the ways in which someone could be throwing plates at your house. And those things are really scary. I don't mean to make light of them in any way, but I think [social media] can be a legitimate place of joy, just like straight up funny, taking a break. A way of reminding yourself that the world isn’t as serious as we make it all the time, you know. And it's strange because I’ve had in the past students who are very, very focused on social justice and one of the things I've told them in their writing is, well to talk specifically about poets, I tell them, “Don't forget to write the poems that you would if the world were just.” Because I'm very, very concerned about them having a framework in which harm and injustice is required for them to make art. But they can't live like that. Their imagination would form around only creating art in response to a wound that will never heal, and I think sometimes, you know, Twitter will behave, or social media can behave in this joyous, irreverent way that reminds me that we can imagine something different.
AH: It is important to remember that you're there, in a large part, because it's fun. But that's really beautiful, I'm gonna have to sit with that.
What you're capable of is large. I really like that. I mean, I'm really gonna sit with that. Like if gender equality was solved tomorrow and I just woke up, what would I do with my time?
SL: What comics would you be making, right? Absolutely. I mean, not to be all “art’s hard for art's sake,” but my answer, my most enduring answer when someone asks me why I write poems—and I think this is transferable for why you write essays or comics—the top-level answer is for pleasure. I mean, it is also pleasurable for me to address inequality, to feel like I'm moving in the world. And don't we deserve pleasure?
AH: You know, we definitely do. What got me into comics is that I just enjoyed the process so much, even if I'm writing about something difficult for me, I like the process of writing and having written. I love being in the conversation. But to sit down and “What's another word for orange?” Terrible. Hate it. Making comics, the first part, doing the research, running a script, that’s also challenging for me. But then, the longest part, the actual execution—I love it. I'm just sitting down, drawing my little pictures, watching old seasons of Survivor, whatever I can watch with half my brain, and I find the process to be so pleasurable and joyful in a way that writing prose, for me, isn’t. There are always moments of the [writing] process that I really like, where something clicks in place that feels great, but the vast majority of it is tough for me. And yeah, it feels terrible. But with comics, I really like the process. So I don't know, if I had infinite time, I probably would just draw pictures of people's pets for them. Anybody that messages me. It doesn't matter how busy I am. If they're like, “Hey, I love your work, and I want to get this T-shirt for my friend and I want to have pictures of our dogs on it.” I'd be like, “Yes. Yes, I will do it. I don't care how many deadlines I have. If it involves someone's beloved pet, I will do it. I got you. It'll be amazing. Just tell me what you want. I'll do it.”