"Just trying to have a good-faith discussion." She had heard that phrase a thousand times. It was the mating call of the sealion—the person who swims up to your boat, honks politely, and slowly, patiently, capsizes you with the sheer weight of their "just asking."
was for the aggressors. The people who quote-tweeted her hot takes about a TV show finale just to add, "L take, go touch grass." The man who DM’d her a single eggplant emoji at 2 AM. The anonymous accounts with default avatars and pinned retweets of Andrew Tate.
She opened her notes app. And for the first time in an hour, she wrote a sentence for herself. twitter blocked list
The block list wasn't a prison. It was a filter . Every second she spent explaining to Tom why "just asking" was a form of exhaustion was a second she wasn't writing her novel, or calling her mom, or taking a deep breath and feeling the sun on her face.
She clicked on Tom’s profile. His banner was a misty mountain. His bio read: “Engineer. He/him. Empathy is my operating system.” "Just trying to have a good-faith discussion
Tom wasn't Red. He wasn't even Blue. He was a new color. The tone police. The concern troll. The man who thought his "logical" assessment of her "emotional" reaction was a gift he was bestowing.
was for the willfully stupid. The "just asking questions" crowd about vaccines. The "both sides" intellectuals when one side was literally on fire. Her own cousin, after he started sharing QAnon drop patterns. The anonymous accounts with default avatars and pinned
Lena’s blocked list was, by any metric, a masterpiece.