What I Learned From a Viral Tweet

You don’t really want it to happen to you

Two years ago, I walked into my job at a local bookstore shaking with anxiety. I kept checking my phone, watching my notifications explode. Before I arrived at work, I had spent the morning locking down my Facebook account and scrounging my internet presence for any personal details that might jeopardize my safety.

Overnight, a controversial tweet I had written in response to legislature pushing back against abortion access completely blew up. As a young feminist writer, the attention to my work seemed like a dream come true. I was going viral. Who wouldn’t want that?

Instead of celebrating, I felt fear and disgust as the trolling and hateful responses scrolled across my screen. The time I usually spend eating breakfast and getting ready for work was wasted on protecting myself from the angry online mob. They called me things like slut, baby murderer, and worse because I was advocating for women’s rights.

It was horrifying. I feared for my safety. But the trolling was one thing — the response from my conservative family members who saw my viral tweet as it was shared all over the internet was a whole other issue. Relatives blocked and unfriended me, some even scolding me before disappearing from my life. I received angry texts from family and…