When your tweet gets retweeted several hundred times you feel like a celebrity
Look, my tweet appeared on Twitter's homepage!
Twitter never ceases to amaze me. Today I sign in and see that HATE MALAYSIA is on trending topics. Since I have a connection with the country, I was curious about it and found out that at a soccer match Malaysian fans blinded the Indonesian goal keeper with lasers (
source). Seriously, that was pretty lame. Whoever did that, does not understand the spirit of fair play. However the incident, incited by one or few people, started an online war between Malaysians and Indonesians on Twitter and other social networks. I read some tweets, became angry and wrote this:
It was a simple tweet written out of an impulse. I didn't expect much. But then suddenly people started to retweet it, Malaysians, Indonesians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Indians... first 3, then 20, then 62... then over 100. Suddenly I got tons of new followers, people reposted my words few hundred times. I could not believe what was happening. Not only that, so many gave me feedback, most was positive, but some accused me of being racist, a white supremacist or that I don't understand the situation in Asia. Some also asked, if in the West there was no hate. Those were the ones, that would also add something derogatory about USA.
I was RTed by @toptweets. Felt great to see my face up there. Didn't I look cool? :-PSo let me explain my epic tweet. The things I mentioned of course were generalizations, simplifications and a bit exaggerated. But what do you expect from a tweet? What else can I say in 140 signs other than something with a point, something that hits you right in the face?
Those who know me, know how hard I try to understand the reality from multiple sides and how I want to be a bridge between the East and the West, between Asia and Europe. I always try to see things for two sides in every issue. And accusing me of being a racist or white supremacist based on this tweet is hilarious, albeit baseless. My point was to highlight the silly conflicts in Asia, that always make netizens go haywire and attack each other.
Just recently there was an incident in taekwondo, where a Taiwanese athlete was disqualified unfairly by a Korean referee (
source) and Taiwanese netizens went berserk, created numerous
I hate Koreans groups on Facebook, some even burned Korean flags.
How can you hate all people of a country because of one single incident that only involved few people? I understand the anger, but sometimes things go too far. And that was part of the reason I wrote that tweet. If you ask me, there are too many conflicts in Asia (like the one
in Korea recently). And we saw how real and deadly it can become. It always starts with words, words of hate. Then incidents follow, the hate grows and suddenly there's no way back and something really bad happens. Be it in Europe or Asia, I'm against all hate. I was always against hating certain groups, just because few people from that group have done something bad.
Luckily most Asian people, who have read my tweet, got the point, that's why it became top. The most important part of my tweet is the question at the end: How about love? My point was to make you think. It's so easy to be angry and say stupid things, because you can switch off your brain and just follow what everybody does. It's harder to pause for a while and ask yourself, if it's really right to hate someone for something very trivial. And that exceeds race and culture, it's sadly a very human flaw.
Let me share some of the interesting responses to
my tweet:
It was fun to be celebrity for few hours. Now I know a little what it means to be when people attack celebs or want to be their friend. It's not easy. So many asked me to follow back, but I'm very selective and don't just follow anyone. So hope you guys understand that. But I will always try to reply to someone, if I get @ed.
UPDATE:
@Favstar50 has just notified me, that my tweet was favorited
51 times and retweeted
623 times. That's plain crazy :P
