Academic Twitter Refugee

If you happen to be following me over here from Twitter, I am indeed the same ethicist who occasionally writes formal op-eds, somewhat less occasionally posts threads about some combination of #sexuality, #ethics, #Judaism, #religion, #disability, #rabbinics, and many other things, and even less occasionally rants into the void and posts pictures of her cats.

Which is to say, can someone please convince Apartheid Clyde that the TRULY disruptive and innovative thing would be to convert Twitter into an employee-owned company? (Or, you know, a public utility?)

You should totally listen to Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri take the piss out of David Brooks' attempt to moralize about BDSM on #IfBooksCouldKillPodcast And then, if you'd like to read something that actually takes ethics and BDSM SERIOUSLY, you should preorder MY book, #WhenWeCollide (out in March from Indiana University Press) which I am assured is nowhere near this asinine.

Image description: Screenshot of a tweet from #IfBooksCouldKillPodcast, which reads "We regret to inform you that Thursday's episode will involve hearing David Brooks encounter the fetish community." Embedded in the tweet is screenshot of text from David Brooks’ “Bobos in Paradise,” of which the final sentence is highlighted, and which reads:

#Twitter (well, for now, and I'm not going anywhere til it does): @RJELevi

#Mastodon: @[email protected]

#Instagram: RJELevi (professional), ambitious_goo (personal)

I'm not sure where I'll find myself having the bandwidth to spend the most time; this is sort of a "throw a bunch of socials at the wall and see what sticks" approach.

Twitter’s likely demise is all just making me legitimately sad, ngl. Academic twitter, for all its problems, has been SUCH a lifeline to me. I wouldn't have even known to apply for the Sacred Writes public scholarship training, which was in retrospect game-changing for my career. I've made real, honest-to-goodness friends #OnHere. And I cannot overstate the extent to which disability twitter has been CRUCIAL for helping keep me accountable to my fellows as far as COVID practice goes.

Nor can I overstate how life-changing #ADHDTwitter and #ActuallyAutistic twitter have been for me.

It all hurts. And it's infuriating. Twitter, for all its problems, is a vital and indispensable commons for so many people, especially marginalized communities. I'm furious that a vicious, incompetent shande for the neurotypicals was able to buy it and crash it.

(Though I've gotta say, if it had to go up in flames, having the Avignon papacy resurrected via shitpost in the process was *chef's kiss*) And then there’s, again, how it’s helped me professionally. I know I'm not a HUGE account by any stretch of the imagination, but I had built a decent following, especially among the cross-section of folks I'd figured had the most interest in my work. It’s also the space where I had figured out best how to do informal public scholarship. And it is SO annoying to have to figure that out again--ESPECIALLY just leading up to my book coming out!