In some ways, I’m responding about the Miami Vice maelstrom, but not really. The online mobbing wasn’t really about Miami Vice. It was about power.

Let’s begin from the top: A film critic, Brandon TK, tweeted, “I’m showing my girlfriend TK.”

I quote RT’d it to say: “Straight men live on a different planet than the rest of us, cos WHOT is this?”

He, upset tweeted, “I’m not straight and I hope that you have a miserable fucking life”.

I replied, “Fuck you Brandon (with a heart emoji)”.

All hell broke loose from there.

People began slowly, but steadly flooding my mentions to tell me that I’m being “an asshole”, that I was being “mean” and that Miami Vice was an excellent movie, have you even seen it?

It seemed unfathomable that I didn’t like a movie that the director and the actors have distanced themselves from.

Many of the tweets in the beginning were this:

I do not have to like the same thing that you like!

This did not please people, that felt that their friend was owed an apology, for me hurting his feelings.

Few people will admit to participating in mobs, and even fewer will admit to enjoying them. Almost no one will admit to enjoying an online mob swarming someone for you. It makes you feel powerful in a society handing over the keys to economic and political life to all forms of oligarchy. It makes you feel popular, especially if in the larger world, you are not.

But the mouth and actions say and do seperate things.

Over the next four days, from about July 6th until the 10th, an online mob was fomented, swarmed and camped out in my Twitter mentions that if I were to describe it, was probably the worst example of online mobbing that I’ve ever seen on the site.

Things really took a dark turn when I refused to apologize, or recant or engage people’s feelings around the movie. They were also especially upset that I refused to “admit” to being “biphobic” or a “gender essentialist” for what they felt was calling and ignoring Brandon’s sexuality, who is queer.

It's interesting: if I had had this visceral response be having been mistaken for gay, and fomenting an online mob and that mob felt that they were justified in doing so because I had been wrongly labelled, I would have rightly been called homophobic. I cannot think of a shortage of people that would’ve been explaining to me that being mistaken for gay is not a crime (which is true), and that by reacting this way, I’m further endangering and emboldening harm against gay people (which is also true). None of these critiques would’ve been wrong.

So let’s call this what it is. This was not about sexuality, which is why I didn’t engage it. It was racist, it was sexist and it was one of the most explicit cases of hating women on Elon Musk’s site that’s been expressed in a long while. And it absolutely emboldens, endorses and rewards an online mobbing of Black women and any woman that disagrees with men online and will not fall into “place.” This does not change because women – queer, straight, Black, White, etc -- participated in this. Patriarchy has never had a shortage of handmaidens and foot soliders of the female variety.