Friday, July 24, 2009

The Children Of #Iranelection

The world is filled with all sorts of people. The same can be said for Twitter. People from different backgrounds, races, income brackets, and sexual preference to name a few, jump on Twitter for a wide variety of reasons. Some partake in the world's largest soapbox, while others want to find out what's going on in the world, and/or let the world know what they're doing. And then there are the folks on Twitter who are on Twitter and do all three of the above mentioned activities.
The Iran related threads on Twitter was an encampment for hundreds of hardcore supporters of the protesters in Tehran. They took advantage of the soapbox, received and broadcast information about what was happening on the ground in Tehran....and slammed the door on anyone who did not conform with their positions. In other words, anyone who came onto threads such as #iranelection in late June of 09 and did not declare full blown support for the Mousavi crowd or failed to condemn the Iranian government were labeled as "Gov't agents" or "Basij agents looking to spread false rumors and trick protesters into revealing their names and locations in Iran."
The thought process was painfully simple: If you were not with the protesters, then you were against them.
This shouldn't be too surprising since the majority of folks passionately posting about the situation in Iran were students and others in their early to mid twenties. Children really, who know very little about the real world aside from what some of their ultra-leftist professors extolled them with in college. They are old enough to know what was right and what was wrong, but how to contend with it was another story. By the time one reaches the age of 21 or 22, the mind has not fully matured. They lack, for the most part, ample amounts of real world experience. Americans in this age group add the extra ingredient of being spoiled brats who are used to having things go their way. So when the mullahs in Tehran were not doing what the children on #iranelection wanted them to do, the children decided to scream their heads off, demand that the mullah's conform to their expectations, and sling mud. The children unleashed the same tactic on the people on the threads who were not in full support of their efforts. They succeeded in driving off some of the pro-Irangov't crowd, yet their efforts did little to deter Eyeranprotestr.
Eyeranprotestr was attacked the moment he set foot on twitter. As the children passed tweets filled with rumors of strikes, death threats against Ahmadenijad, and 'reports' of police and military units siding with the protesters, I began launching tweets that refuted these reports and rumors. No mainstream western media outlets were reporting anything of the kind. The internet and twitter in Iran was all but shut down. Nothing was coming out of the country from anyone. The government was clamping down, that much was apparent. Nevertheless, the children were not to be deterred. Iran related retweets flooding twitter were 'the truth.' Reality was ignored. Mir Mousavi was a god who was destined to ride the sea of green to claim his 'rightful' place as president of Iran. The children on Twitter believed that their duty was essential to the success of the protesters in Iran. Yeah, sure. Like the Ayatollah is going to be brought to his knees because thousands of children on Twitter despise him.
Apparently, the children thought this.
Every attempt I made to have a discussion on what was happening in Iran met resistance. Eyeranprotestr was not conforming to the expectations of the children. The more I tried to engage in conversation questioning the reports of 'hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets' for example, I was shouted down and labeled a government agent or member of the Basij. Here's an example.....

Thedissent: RT @Eyeranprotestr is Basij agent. Block him. Hear that CRUNCH, Eyeranprotestr? Its the Peoples' boots They're coming 4 u #iran #iranelection


After seeing a thousand of these lies, I decided to fight fire with fire. The children were ignoring reality and wanted Eyeranprotestr to be a hated Basij-like pro-Ahmadenijad bastard, so the Eyeranprotestr was going to accomodate them.