Ashley Reese doesn't know why she makes Twitter so mad
“I really think that over 10k [followers] and having a check mark next to your name, you kind of become open season for people.”
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Get you an interview that can do both (touch on the experience of marginalized identities online and the James Potter/Regulus Black fandom) —Kate
Despite what TikTok may tell you, being a main character isn’t always a good thing—especially on Twitter. If you’re Twitter’s character of the day, you’re at the center of a discourse so explosive that it takes over your entire feed. It’s a feeling that, for reasons unknown to me and her, writer Ashley Reese knows all too well.
I first came across Ashley on Twitter when she was a writer at Jezebel and followed her because it was clear she was raised on the same Harry Potter side of the internet as I was. I don’t just mean she knows her Hogwarts house. I mean she uses the term “Jegulus” in this interview. You may also know her from Vogue, which covered her backyard wedding with her late husband, Rob, who passed away in December.
Over the years, I also came to know Ashley for her uncanny ability to tweet something objectively benign that ends up inciting the most heated discourse you’ve ever seen. As I write this very post, she is being accused of not believing in wheelchair accessibility (?) because she tweeted that she wishes that old books and TV shows use disclaimers instead of editing outdated instances of sexism and racism (???).
This kind of bad-faith leap of logic may seem ludicrous, but it is indicative of where the online discourse is currently at. And it’s not just a Twitter problem, but a bit of a pandemic problem—an isolation-induced breakdown in communication and civility. Ashley also guesses that it has something to do with how people view her specifically.
In this interview for paid subscribers, Ashley and I talk candidly about growing up online, how that experience informs her relationship with the internet today, and why she thinks people can’t help but lose their shit whenever she tweets.