Tweet in haste

There are all sorts of little feuds and contretemps that swirl around on Twitter, but that don’t always gain much traction in the normal (anti-social?) media.

One recent one involved a DC Metro rider named Natasha Tynes.

Tynes was riding the rails when she spied a Metro employee eating on the train, a practice that’s verboten. (No one – employee or rider – is supposed to be eating or drinking while on a train or in a station.)

Not satisfied with the options available to most normal folks – ignore it entirely, roll eyes/make a face (the passive-aggressive stew), mutter something to the person seated next to you, or – if really riled up - maybe say something along the lines of “are you aware that you’re not supposed to be eating”, or report it to transit officials (perhaps being a bit vague on the details) - Tynes settled on a multi-pronged close encounter.

She directly confronted the employee, only to be told to buzz off (“worry about yourself”). Decidedly not content to worry about herself, since that was way not enough, Tynes took a picture of the scofflaw and tweeted her little report off to @wmata, the person’s employer.

The Metro responded to Tynes having @-ed them with a complaint.

…and thanked her “for catching this and helping us make sure all Metro employees are held accountable.” Tynes then provided further details, including the time, the train the employee was traveling on and direction that it was headed. (Source: Washington Post)

Tynes – a communications and social media expert employed by the World Bank – was happy to supply the deets, and the Metro was happy to be supplied with them:

We appreciate these details and have included them in the report. Enjoy the rest of your day and thank you for riding with us. -KP

The Metro employee was a black woman, and Tynes, while a person of color (she’s a Jordanian American), is not a person of that color.

Twitter went into uber-umbrage mode, dragging Tynes as a racist.

No reason to believe Tynes was motivated by racism. Certainly, you should be able to criticize a black person.

But there’s plenty of reason to believe that Tynes is a busy body, a show-off, thoughtless, and – at least at the moment when she launched her initial tweet – nasty.

There are all sorts of little things that happen, day in day out, that degrade communal life. Folks litter. People hawk and spit. Clerks treat you rudely. A pet owner doesn’t scoop the poop. A commuter pushes onto the train while travelers are still trying to get off.

You pick your spots. Sometimes you say something, sometimes you don’t bother. Sometimes it feels too risky to speak up. Other times you just feel like saving your breath.

I shake my fist at drivers running red lights, sometimes, when I’m in a crosswalk (not jaywalking, mind you) and someone sails through a stop sign or light, I’ll slap the side of the car, just to let them know that they might have hit somebody.

Confronting someone – passively or aggressively – can be a dangerous practice.

One time, I was almost clipped by a fellow tearing around the corner (in a Porsche or some similar too-fast-for-an-urban-neighborhood vehicle).  I hollered, “Asshole.”

The guy slammed on his brakes, hopped out of the car, and yelled at me: “Why am I an asshole?”

I wanted to say, “Why are you asking a complete stranger? You should be asking someone who knows you.”

Instead, figuring that anyone who wasn’t willing to give this a pass was probably pretty loosely wrapped and possibly dangerous, I weasel-worded him. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

That seemed to satisfy him. He got back in his car and roared off.

Since everyone is now armed with a camera, many of these little encounters are now filmed. And the reason for filming is to have something to put on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Because it’s not enough to be ticked off, it’s not enough to just do something about it, you really need to center your response on public shaming.

Eating on the subway can be offensive. (Did I offend the other day when, while riding on the Red Line, I found the end of an old roll of (stale) Butter Rum Lifesavers and ate a couple of them?)

But a transit employee eating on the subway is hardly a major infraction. It’s not screaming at or hitting a passenger. It’s not breaking into a fare machine and shoving the cash in your pockets. It’s not brandishing a pistol. It may be illegal in DC to eat on a train, but it’s “small i” illegal. A venial rather than mortal sin.

So why is it no longer enough, when the incident is a pretty innocuous one, to just say something to the innocuous offender, or even report the incident to the authorities? 

I’m just as glad that there are now phone cameras that can be tapped to solve crimes, reveal police brutality, report potholes and all sorts of other society-enhancing tasks. But why are we so compelled to video people who are picking their noses and upload it for the world to see?

Why couldn’t Tynes have taken a deep breath, thought about the implications of putting someone’s picture out there, hanging them out to dry, as it were? Why not ask yourself whether the person doing the eating on the subway had her reasons? 

Barry Hobson, the chief of staff for the Metro workers union — Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 — said in a statement that the Metro employee was taking her meal break while in transit from one assignment to another. The statement notes operators have “an average of 20 minutes to consume a meal and get to their next access point to ensure all buses and trains are on time, safe, and ready to serve the riding public.”

Okay, I do find it tiny bit unbelievable that members of the Metro workers union only get a 20 minute meal break. But still…

When the twits hit the fan, Tynes pulled her tweet (and the photo) and apologized, but the harm was done. To her.

Tynes is a writer who publishes articles on parenting in the Washington Post. She also has a novel coming out shortly.

The book is about a Jordanian student who is murdered and realizes that her “consciousness” has inhabited Wyatt, a 3-year-old boy with speech delays, according to the synopsis.

(Think I’ll take a hard pass on this one.)

And it looks like her publisher and distributors might decide to take a hard pass as well.

The distributor, Rare Bird Books, has said:

“We think this is unacceptable and have no desire to be involved with anyone who thinks it’s acceptable to jeopardize a person’s safety and employment in this way.”

And the publisher, California Coldblood Books, has:

…announced it will postpone the book’s publication date “while we further discuss appropriate next steps to officially cancel” it.

And people have been posting pre-publication negative reviews.

Tynes is not without her defenders.

A Twitter account, Unsuck DC Metro, has pinned Tynes’ tweet and the employee’s picture:

“NO one wants to watch you stuff your pie hole. NO one wants to smell your nasty food,” the account tweeted, adding in a reply that it was committed to leaving the photo online and “no one is getting in trouble for this.

Unsuck DC Metro sounds nice!

Anyway, by posting the photo, and @-ing the Metro, it sure did look like Tynes was trying to get the employee in trouble.

Roxane Gay (@rgay) perhaps had the best counterpoint to Tynes:

We all complain on social media but you... don’t identify the person you’re complaining about, in a photo no less, and try to get them fired. What on earth? For eating on the train?

It seems like overkill for Tynes’ publisher and distributor to turn on her. But tweet in haste, Ms. Tynes, repent at leisure..