A young expert on Arab affairs sent me this (she does not want to be identified):
"My Twitter activity is very limited - I have about 300 Tweets, 150 followers, and myself follow about 130 (including yourself). As we all know, Twitter is very useful for keeping up with the latest developments and gaining a sense of popular reactions and opinions about those developments; social media's democratization of knowledge is priceless. But even with my limited usage I have encountered quite an unpleasant online activist environment revolving around Syria on several occasions, the worst of which took place two days ago. First, I benefited from the online community when asking fellow 'Tweeps' why I could not access SANA's website to read Bashar's recent official statement to the military. An online activist helpfully advised that I remove the 'www' from the URL - it worked. Having had this conversation on Twitter, I posted the link to my feed to share with others who may be interested in reading the original text in Arabic and not just the brief translated excerpts reported by news agencies. The response? I was condemned by "SyriaTweetEn" who tweeted ".... ZIONIST BITCH, FUCK U & BASHAR." I cannot reply to this Tweet because of their account privacy settings. But what would be the point anyway? I don't care to re-state to activist after activist that I have been opposed to the regime since Day Zero. My opposition doesn't meet their expectations and that's that.
I'm sharing this with you because... I don't know. Because I feel disillusioned. I am disillusioned by the present state of the crisis in which the Syrian community seems irredeemably polarized, each entrenched in their positions where they believe they are the owners of truth and principle. I am disillusioned by the future state in which freedom of expression and national dialogue may be fantasy. and so it goes."
"My Twitter activity is very limited - I have about 300 Tweets, 150 followers, and myself follow about 130 (including yourself). As we all know, Twitter is very useful for keeping up with the latest developments and gaining a sense of popular reactions and opinions about those developments; social media's democratization of knowledge is priceless. But even with my limited usage I have encountered quite an unpleasant online activist environment revolving around Syria on several occasions, the worst of which took place two days ago. First, I benefited from the online community when asking fellow 'Tweeps' why I could not access SANA's website to read Bashar's recent official statement to the military. An online activist helpfully advised that I remove the 'www' from the URL - it worked. Having had this conversation on Twitter, I posted the link to my feed to share with others who may be interested in reading the original text in Arabic and not just the brief translated excerpts reported by news agencies. The response? I was condemned by "SyriaTweetEn" who tweeted ".... ZIONIST BITCH, FUCK U & BASHAR." I cannot reply to this Tweet because of their account privacy settings. But what would be the point anyway? I don't care to re-state to activist after activist that I have been opposed to the regime since Day Zero. My opposition doesn't meet their expectations and that's that.
I'm sharing this with you because... I don't know. Because I feel disillusioned. I am disillusioned by the present state of the crisis in which the Syrian community seems irredeemably polarized, each entrenched in their positions where they believe they are the owners of truth and principle. I am disillusioned by the future state in which freedom of expression and national dialogue may be fantasy. and so it goes."
