Ashley Reese doesn't know why she makes Twitter so mad
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 because she tweeted that she wishes that old books and TV shows use disclaimers instead of editing outdated instances of sexism and racism (???).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.
How you would describe yourself, and how did you get started on the internet?
I'm Ashley Reese. I'm a writer who has been writing professionally for about 10 years now. I've been a freelancer. I wrote at Jezebel for a long time until I was poached by Netflix and then subsequently laid off from Netflix. So I’ve been kind of just vibing now, because I spent most of last year being a caregiver for my husband who passed away.
As someone who's 32, I feel like my earliest experiences of the internet were very AOL-based, late ‘90s, early 2000s. But I really feel like my beginning of coming of age online was definitely getting a LiveJournal account when I was like 13, back in spring 2004. I didn't even know that I wanted to be a writer when I first started blogging, but sharing my life just became really natural. I got really into online fandoms through that, too. So, you know, you go through the LiveJournal to Tumblr pipeline, and I got a Twitter account a long time ago, too, but I only really started using it a lot when I moved to New York and started becoming a writer. I did a lot of politics reporting and culture reporting for Jez, but I only started [getting] a lot of followers and stuff around the 2020 election. Everyone says once you get above a certain threshold of followers on Twitter, it becomes untenable to use the app. I really think that over 10k [followers] and having a check mark next to your name, you kind of become open season for people.
I think I just suffer from a combination of being very opinionated, having a sense of humor and not taking things super seriously all the time, and having a kind of sardonic approach to things. But also, when you’re a Black woman online, you’re hyper-visible, and I guess I just say the right things to piss off people of all political persuasions and various fandom alliances. The most normal app for me right now is Instagram, where I have almost as many followers as I do on Twitter. And it's like, God, I can have 50,000 people following me on Instagram and not be crazy, but the second I tweet the most innocuous shit I get people screaming at me.
It's interesting the way that different platforms normalize different types of behavior. On Twitter it’s totally okay to be really combative and interpret things in bad faith. But I feel like some people would say the origin of that type of discourse would be Tumblr. Did you find yourself in these situations on Tumblr?
Not as many, and I feel like I was just probably even less self-aware of what I said on there and was still just as opinionated.
Someone mentioned the picky eater drama again recently where, I can't even remember the exact tweet, [but] I said something to the effect of like, “I can't stand picky eaters, just eat a vegetable already.” Like something which is a throwaway, and then all of a sudden it's like, “Oh, you're actually ableist.” And I’m just like, I’m sorry if I value dining experiences with people who have more than chicken tenders and french fries. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.
I am that chicken tender person and even I’m like, “Yeah, it’s annoying.” I wish I was different.
A few people told me today, they’re like, “I am that person and I followed you after that because it was funny.” And I'm just like, “Thank you.” Or one of my friends was like, “I’m autistic and sometimes I think of your tweet and I eat a piece of broccoli.”
There are two things happening, I think. One is the classic “people expecting any content they come across to pertain to their specific experience,” which with this level of reach and connection is just not possible. So there’s that. But then there’s also this need to social justice-ify something. You can't just be annoyed by something. It has to be problematic. It’s like, bring back just being annoyed.
My whole thing is like, I'm not trying to sound like a woke scold when I say this, but I say this as a marginalized person. I say this as someone who cares about marginalized identities and cares about people not being oppressed, but I’m also not someone who needs to prove that to people all the time. I think that Tumblr definitely introduced this need to always prove your values and your ethics from everything you consume to how you consume it, like a fandom and how you consume that. What pairings you like and how that represents what your politics are and who you are as a person. And I think that translates to being so hyper-aware of everything potentially being a personal attack. I think most marginalized people who are self-aware enough can have something that tickles the back of their brain like, “Hmm, this feels kind of sexist or this feels kind of racist.” But I think that when people go the extra mile to just have the most bad faith—I know that people toss that word around—but the most bad faith, worst possible conclusion about a throwaway statement that could easily be ignored.
What I’ve realized recently is I think the solutions to these large structural problems feel so inaccessible. And so we’re like, okay, what do we have in our power to do? So we pick a really small scale version of something we’re annoyed about and fight that battle because it feels like doing something.
It’s an attempt to feel power and people love the dopamine hit of doing a dog pile. I think of this as a primal weird kind of, you find a tweet that you’re deciding you’re mad at, you get your friends, and then you just do the dog pile, you get the dopamine hit of calling someone stupid. The most recent drama that I’m thinking of is when I was responding to that video going around, that creepy podcast dude talking to those women saying men like sexual purity and you have this woman being like, “Ew, that’s like weird. Like no.” I didn’t see the purpose of recirculating that video, but I was just kinda responding to it cause my whole timeline was talking about it and I just quote-tweeted, “Men like sexually pure women? As someone who was a virgin to my mid twenties, I find that kind of funny. But also any guys who actually think like this are weird.” That’s all I was saying. And I was mentioning the first part because people who are also in that boat understand the kind of stigmatization that occurs when you are an older virgin. We’re so used to having to be like, “I haven't haven't had sex yet, but I swear I’m normal.” When you get to when you’re an adult, you’re more likely to encounter someone who's like, “I don’t wanna be their first.” The girls who get it got it. But then all of a sudden, people were like, “You don't understand patriarchy.” I’m just like, are you guys agreeing with the podcast dude? And then some people thought that I was agreeing with him. People were just admitting, “I’m so glad people are finally dog piling her. I have hated her since she said the picky eater tweet.” And I’m just like, to get to the point where someone’s like, “Your dead husband is dead because you like…” I’m just like, this is next level.
I saw something on my timeline about parasocial relationships. There’s the kind that is positive—you really like the person’s presence. And then there is parasocial hatred—that sounds a little bit like what you’re describing. I know it happens a lot, and I’ve only had a few similar internet moments, and I am the first to say: It hurts my feelings. It makes me sad. I’m not like, haters to the left. I’m like, this sucks and I’m gonna feel bad about myself. So how do you handle this emotionally?
When it gets really personal, honestly I’m just like, “Whoa. Yikes. That's a low blow.” But I think about what Rob would’ve said in these situations. He’s just like, “These people don’t matter.” It’s easier said than done, but I really had to remind myself, these are sad people behind a screen who take pleasure in holding grudges against me. I’m just like, “Yell at a rightwinger, yell at someone who’s actually causing harm to your community and communities you care about.” So I guess to reiterate, it’s hurtful, but I’m at a point where I know that I’m disliked by people for some weird reason and I can either feel sad about that all the time or be the bigger person. And I think being the bigger person is, when someone’s like, “You need to think about your worm food husband.” I’m like, “Actually he’s cremated.” And “Well then he is blowing in the wind” and I’m like, “Actually he's on my shelf. But thank you. I just got some flowers for him.” I could start name-calling and saying other things. People are just like, “I don’t know how you handle it.” I'm just like, at the end of the day, despite being someone who’s grieving, I’ve had a great life. I had a great partner who also had a very great fulfilling life and was really successful. We’re going to be able to do IVF to have our kid. Meanwhile, these are people who are spending their precious time insulting dead people. It’s very immature. People are like, “Why are you always fighting with teenagers?” I’m like, if you look at their profile, oftentimes these people are in their 20s.
I think people assume the people behaving like this online must be teenagers because I think it’s more disturbing to realize that it’s actually regular people.
These are adults. These are people who can vote and buy cigarettes. The behavior is so infantile that you assume, “Oh, you’re 15 years old.” And sometimes it’s a 17-year-old, and maybe this is wrong of me, but I'm just like, “If you talk some shit to me, I don’t care how old you are, I’m gonna say that’s wrong.” I might give you more leeway if your brain isn’t done cooking, but at the same time, I don’t think that just being underage online gives you carte blanche of the internet.
There’s also just a cowardly portion of this where it’s just like, these are all cowards behind a screen. Most of them don't have their real face attached. They don’t have their name attached. They feel a sense of power in their anonymity, like the average troll does. People are like, “You’re a big account. You’re abusing your authority.” But I’m sorry, if you’re gonna say something nasty to me, I will absolutely use the fact that I have a big account and I have friends who will back me up to dog pile you back, ‘cause I know that I’m in the better moral position here. I don’t talk about how people look. I don’t use nasty language. It’s not in my nature.
Some people try to bully me to apologize or to take something back or they feel a sense of triumph, for example, when I delete the tweet. I only deleted it not ‘cause I’m wrong, but because you guys are so annoying and don’t read anything in good faith.
I’ve thought about this, too, because everyone has control over their online environment, and you actually don’t owe anyone a fight. You don’t owe anyone discourse.
I don’t owe anyone an explanation, either. Like when they’re trying to say, “Actually what your tweet was implying was that victims of childhood sexual assault are not valid.” I’m just like, “You are reading something completely different into what I said and that’s not my fault. That’s your fault. Why would I apologize for you misinterpreting something I wrote?”
What are some of the more memorable discourses for you? Because I think the one that stands out to me had something to do with Snape.
Oh, you’re probably thinking of when the Reylos [Rey and Kylo Ren shippers] got mad at me. I wrote an article about Snapewives, like women who were really obsessed with Snape and not just marrying him on the astral plane or whatever, but were very invested in defending his most grotesque personality traits which, as someone who is a fan of the character, I’m just like, if you’re going to like the character, own up to them being a bad person. Don’t justify a grown man bullying a 10-year-old. And I made one sentence at the end, in the conclusion, that says something to the effect of like, maybe this generation’s Snapewives are like Kylo Ren super fans. And I guess they saw that and were like, “Oh my God. How dare she compare these two things” and blah, blah, blah. I’m just like, I’ve watched maybe one of those Adam Driver Star Wars. I don’t know anything beyond what I see online, which is a lot of fervor. And they proved my point by trying to get me fired from my job for writing one sentence mentioning a character in a fandom. It’s like, these are fictional characters.
And so there’s that. But off the top of my head there’s the picky eater discourse one. A few times people have called me classist for saying that you should tip a dollar for coffee. There was also the autistic Hermione beef when someone was yelling at my friend, another writer named Gita, who did a throwaway funny tweet like, “Maybe Hermione would've had more friends if she wasn’t such a know-it-all.” And Twitter was like, “Well actually, Hermione being a know-it-all is a common trait of autism and it's Hermione is autistic-coded and therefore you’re being ableist by saying that Hermione is a know-it-all.” And I was like, “Hey, I don’t think that calling someone a know-it-all is ableist” and then I was called ableist for saying that.
It’s so funny that these are all about fictional characters because it’s like, you’re getting mad at someone for not acting within the world and the rules that you’ve created in your own head.
Right. If that’s your head canon or whatever, cool, but don’t yell at someone and call them ableist for using the phrase “know-it-all.” I’m like, when does it end?
I don’t know if you know the Jegulus drama. Someone was like, “What’s a pairing that just baffles you?” And I was like, Jegulus—if you’re a Harry Potter nerd, James Potter and Sirius’s brother Regulus is like a huge pairing now. And I’m like, I don’t get it. And one of my friends made a random comment about how she used to write Sirius/Regulus [fan fiction], like the brothers. And I’m just like, “Well that makes more sense to me than James and Regulus.” And people were like, “Oh, you support incest.” My sense of humor is a little bit goofy like that. I pushed back on some of the people who were like, “You support pedophilia” or “You support incest.” I’m like, “What does that mean? Are you actually suggesting that I, in real life, support abusive family dynamics?” I don’t believe in getting into arguments with people all the time, but if you’re gonna lie about me and accuse me of something so serious and heinous, I’m gonna be like, no.
And that’s just the past two, three years of discourses.
Truly. And I think that the fact that I am more visible now and everything just really heightens it. People wanna yell at someone with a blue check.
You’re their outlet for something that day.
Yeah. And I do feel bad for a lot of these people ‘cause it’s just like, this is what you do for fun. You don’t have anyone in your life to be like, “Maybe you shouldn’t make fun of someone’s dead husband cause you didn’t like the way she worded a tweet.”
Has this made you change your posting habits at all? Do you feel less comfortable online or is it something you're powering through?
I’ve been hesitant to talk about certain political stuff sometimes because if it’s not right-wingers yelling at me, it’s, I don't know, Kamala Harris stans yelling at me. I'm not going out of my way to engage with a right-wing Twitter account with a hundred thousand followers. That’s just stupid to me. Why would I want all those people in my mentions? But that’s why I think I get confused when I’m talking about things that I generally consider safe topics, like about how you should tip someone. Even if you disagree, the way that people react online now is really strange to me. I think especially for younger people. I dunno if the pandemic has really stunted a lot of emotional and social growth, but don’t take it out on me. If you see something you disagree with, just keep it moving, or if it’s something egregious, then, okay. But I don’t think I say anything that’s egregious enough to justify people accusing me of really heinous stuff. It’s a lot of misplaced anger. A lot of hurt people, hurt people. I’m an easy target.