Let’s be real: you need to have thick skin in the social media era.
Maybe it’s causing some people to develop thick skin they didn’t know they had, but in many cases it’s had a reverse effect where the outrage has spiraled completely out of control.
And that was certainly the case with a New York Times columnist who decided to quit Twitter for this hilariously sensitive reason.
We live in a consistent culture of people who can dish it out but they can’t take it.
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens is the epitome of that hypocrisy.
Bret Stephens is a Jewish American New Yorker who began his career as an op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal in 2002. Since then he has been an editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post, an on-air contributor for NBC News and MSNBC before taking the New York Times position.
Stephens also won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Commentary recognizing his 2012 columns for the Wall Street Journal for “incisive columns on U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist.”
While he’s considered to be a “neoconservative,” he has been demonstrably anti-President Trump over the years and continues to be that way today. Stephens has a reputation for being condescending and aggressive towards “sensitive culture.”
But he might’ve thrown his entire career away when he deleted his Twitter account because someone made a joke that he was a bedbug.
Stephens’ colleague, Stuart A. Thompson, tweeted on Monday, “Breaking — There are bedbugs in the NYT newsroom.”
Associate Professor of George Washington University, Dave Karpf,” responded, “The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens.”
The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens. https://t.co/k4qo6QzIBW
— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 26, 2019
This of course set Stephens on fire. So much so that Stephens actually emailed Karpf and cc’ed his university provost.
This afternoon, I tweeted a brief joke about a well-known NYT op-Ed columnist.
It got 9 likes and 0 retweets. I did not @ him. He does not follow me.
He just emailed me, cc’ing my university provost. He is deeply offended that I called him a metaphorical bedbug.
— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 27, 2019
Karpf even showed the email.
Alright fine… here is the email: pic.twitter.com/A4E5I6CoB6
— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 27, 2019
Not only is it completely ridiculous that he sent the email in the first place over a joke, but he had the audacity to cc his university provost? Obviously Stephens’ intention was to try to get him fired, or at the very least, some sort of reprimand from the provost.
He also mentions in the email to come over to his house, meet his family, and “then call me a ‘bedbug’ to my face.’”
And then on Tuesday, Stephens went on MSNBC to condemn Karpf’s joke as “dehumanizing and totally unacceptable.” He said he had “no intention of getting [Karpf] into any type of professional trouble” but said “institutions, managers should be aware of the way their people interact with the rest of the world.”
What exactly was his “intention” by cc’ing his provost? You cannot presume any other intention.
In the meantime, Stephens announced his retirement on Twitter and said he was deactivating his account.
Some people can dish it out but they can’t take it.