We did it!

Thank you for answering the call

Ata mārie team!

I checked out the Tokomanawa Queens Facebook page today and HOORAY!

This morning, the Facebook page showed me a 5 star review :)

Thank you to everyone who jumped across and helped rebalance the scales on this page.

I had a chat with the person running their social media and they told me that sadly, more of their day is spent blocking people than posting about the team because of the wave of abuse they get. So thank you for helping them have a good day at mahi!

I know I’ve all but tapped out of Facebook these days, it’s still where the worst of the interactions seem to occur. I say that despite having TERFs flood my mentions on Twitter after I made comment on the ridiculous gender policy proposal by England Rugby and having to block all the homophobes this week after the bloody Manly jersey palaver.

And I know that a lot of the time, I see a whole “debate” going on and at most, passively chuck a like on someone’s comment who is wading in. I very rarely enter into a back and forth much to the frustration of many people I’m sure. That’s perhaps because of my training as a political organiser, which tells you step one of any meaningful conversation is connection. You have to try to find shared ground and values from which you can build an understanding. Which is why social media isn’t the space for these conversations. There you open interactions at your most polarised point.

So I don’t ever offer my opinion to change minds online. I do it to offer solidarity to those who might need to see it. The best piece of feedback I can ever receive is someone telling me I helped them articulate a feeling. My hope is that they can then take that into the real talk offline, with people they can have those connected conversations with.

We don’t need to enter toxic conversations but we do need to show our solidarity.

So next time you see an athlete online, send them the love! They’ll be getting a lot of nonsense from those emboldened and angry, be the bright spot in their day.

With you,

Alice