Pro-life tweet mob shuts down Planned Parenthood PR stunt
I’ve mentioned before that it is helpful to conduct recognizance on the other side’s social networks. You can learn interesting information. Last Tuesday morning Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas posted this notice on its Facebook page:
Texan pro-lifer Andy Moore spotted the notice and immediately began contacting friends. A coalition quickly formed, including (among others) Bryan Kemper, Students for Life of America, and Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust.
When 3p came, pro-lifers were ready, totally overwhelming a Twitter conversation Planned Parenthood had intended to pressure the State of Texas into reinstating funding to one about Planned Parenthood itself. Afterward Bryan reported:
The hash tag was the number #1 trending topic on Twitter and it was BY FAR dominated by pro-life tweets. The conversation they hoped to have was flooded with the truth.
The Austin Chronicle even took note:
Not least of all, the chat moderators spent a good bit of energy trying to explain what this discussion was not about: abortion….
If tagwatchers made it through the deluge of anti-abortion and pro-life tweets, though, they could find a wealth of statistics on the state of women’s health care in Texas….
In the end, followers might have been left with more questions than answers, but that’s par for the course in this arena.
Ta da, mission accomplished. A Planned Parenthood supporter on Facebook dismally noted:
Actually, I’m sure Planned Parenthood and their pro-abortion buddies were mortified and embarrassed by all the great points pro-lifers made. Scroll through the #TXwomenshealth hashtag on February 5 to see.
After the dust settled, I noted many pro-life commenters on Facebook said they didn’t have a Twitter account or know how to set one up. My friend Andrew at @TexasProLife suggested I give a brief tutorial.
PCMag.com has a good brief overview of Twitter.
Simply think of a name for yourself (even your own name, like I use), and a brief description, and sign up here.
You don’t have to tweet anything at first. You can just read tweets to start catching on and to pick up typical Twitter shorthand, since you have to say what you want to say in only 140 characters. There are little tricks, like shortening links.
So the first thing you do is “follow” people whose tweets you want to read. For pro-lifers I would suggest, to get started: @LifeSite, @LiveAction_News, @operation rescue, @StevenErtelt, and me, of course.
I also follow pro-abortion people and groups. And I follow friends, news organizations, and people I admire.
After awhile you may want to start using a Twitter dashboard like Hootsuite to separate the people you follow into groups. That’s what I do.
As this post demonstrates, Twitter can be an important online tool for pro-lifers. And the more of us who participate, the better.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
“the deluge of anti-abortion and pro-life tweets”
Those are separate concepts now?
So, Andy Moore opposes free speech but would whine if he didn’t get his.
In the twitterverse this is what’s referred to as a Hashtag Hijack.
I’m fairly young but I hate Twitter and have up to this point refused to get a twitter account. But now I’m rethinking…
So, Andy Moore opposes free speech
No clue where you’re getting this from. No one’s free speech was trampled on. Everyone, from both sides of the issue, got to participate and have their say.
So this “tweet mob” acquitted itself as crazy and rude to people who are not already down with the “cause”.
If “pro-lifers” had even the slightest capacity for critical self-assessment, they would realize how counter-productive their silly stunts are. But they don’t, and then they wonder why they don’t get glowing media coverage of the “Walk for Life”. The “movement’s” collective inability to understand the relationship between cause and effect in the context of public discourse and socialization borders on the autistic. If you act like an attention-starved maniac, that is probably how you’ll get treated by others.
Joan, yeah, because if a bunch of pro-life people hadn’t shown up (because, as far as I’m aware that’s the requirement for pro-abortionists to consider pro-lifers ‘rude’ and ‘crazy’- line of sight, Planned Parenthood and the pro-abortion media would never spin a few pro-abortion supporters of Planned Parenthood whining about loss of government funding as anything but that. I can see the headlines if pro-lifers hadn’t ‘crashed’: during recent public debate 100% of women disagreed with Texas’s defunding of Planned Parenthood; ‘War on Women?’ All female commenters during recent Twitter hashtag conversation believe Texas should fund Planned Parenthood. The media and PP have a used car salesman’s ethics and spin ability to paint any event missed by hordes of pro-lifers as some sort of grassroots surge of beloved support by the general populous and females in specific of their agenda. Sometimes they even accomplish such a mangling of the situation when pro-lifers *do* show up in force. Making sure politicians especially know likely-voter pro-lifers outnumber and out-concern pro-abortionists is essential to fighting the powerhouse pr firm of Planned Parenthood known as the mainstream media. And since our mere existance causes such terms as ‘crazy’, ‘mob’, and ‘rude’ to be tossed around, we literally have nothing to lose by engaging.
I’m with Sydney re: rethinking getthg a Twitter account.
This post demonstrates how small PP really is when big government isn’t standing behind them. They’re the creepy, controlling Oz of the medical industry, except they kill for a living, too.
Being louder than the other side is not a suppression of speech. It does make you more enthusiastic, though.
So, Kel, there won’t be any whining from the black conservative prolife group who Twitter shut down? After all, Twitter is not a public entity.
Don’t forget @TXRightToLife!
And again, being louder than the other side is not shutting them down. Twitter does have the right to pull accounts if they wish, they do not have the right not to have to be complained to about it.
Geez. Free Speech is not a hard concept but the pro-aborts really just don’t get it.
“The conversation they hoped to have was flooded with the truth.” – ranty extremist propaganda isn’t truth.
“mortified and embarrassed” – maybe mortified that a discussion on womens health services was hijacked by a bunch of extremists. Embarassed for the perpetrators of the hijacking.
“by all the great points pro-lifers made” – I doubt it was seen that way.
Sydney and others:
I’m relatively young, and felt the same way about Twitter at its start. I only joined to help counter Angie the Attention Wh-sorry, I mean Angie The Anti-Theist “live-tweeting” her abortion. Buddy, it sucked me right in, and I’ve been active pretty much ever since. It’s a HIGHLY effective venue for the truth, and one that is so important for us to leverage, since the other side has been utilizing it from the outset with much success.
Which makes me wonder: why am I just now hearing about this?!
Hey, Pro-life movment,
I just wanted to say..
(sigh)
..Thank you for being so AWSOME.
I’ve been on Twitter for awhile now but, somehow, I missed this :(
Hmmm… Twitter?! I really like the idea of being part of a human rights “mob” while I am at home in my PJs.
Yes, Lifejoy, it is kinda awesome.
All I can say is most ppl are pro-life & pro-choice. everyone wants choices and everyone loves life. Don’t put yourself in a small box or claim to know what is best for everyone else. Seriously until we ALL have a more responsible attitude towards sex and women were just going to be pointing fingers and spreading half-truths, and all out lies, meanwhile its the kids who get confused –prejudices and love ironically are the oldest things we have passed to us by generations long gone. .
“Don’t put yourself in a small box or claim to know what is best for everyone else.”
niki ~ I agree with this when it comes to many things, but we do happen to know what’s best for everyone concerning one, rather important part of life – and that is being born and living life.
Hi Niki.
“All I can say is most ppl are pro-life & pro-choice. everyone wants choices and everyone loves life.”
Essentially you have devoided these terms of any meaning. Normally, pro-choice refers to someone who believes that abortion should be a legal procedure. Pro-life refers to someone who believes abortion is a moral evil and should be outlawed. The reason we make up terms for things is so that we don’t have to constantly give a whole paragraph to state certain views of ours. I realize that there is a new Planned Parenthood commercial out there that has told us that we should make these terms meaningless, but why? What is the problem with having a term to describe a particular view? That commercial is so bizarre… pretending to transcend all of human thought…
“Don’t put yourself in a small box”
What is the small box? Saying “one ought not to kill another person”? How is that a small box?
“Don’t …claim to know what is best for everyone else.”
Is this what is best for everyone else? That is, is it best for me if I don’t claim to know what’s best for everyone else? You seem to be very emphatic about the point that one should not claim to know what is best for everyone else, so I’m wondering if your advice that we ought not claim to know what is best for everyone else if you happen to know what is best for everyone else.
“Seriously until we ALL have a more responsible attitude towards sex and women were just going to be pointing fingers and spreading half-truths, and all out lies”
And of course, this is the main problem. Rather than engage with our primary claim that abortion is the unjust killing of an innocent human being, we see this appeal to something about responsible attitudes towards sex and women. What does this mean? How does this address the claim that abortion kills someone? It is so easy to make this red herring and babble about “attitudes” “maturity” “women’s health” etc. to try and distract from the actual issue. Look plain and simple, if you can convince me that abortion does not unjustly take the life of an innocent human person, then we have no problem with abortion. Abortions for all. Why take a play out of Planned Parenthood’s playbook, shut off your brain, and do everything possible to distract from the actual issue?
“prejudices and love ironically are the oldest things we have passed to us by generations long gone. . ”
Supposing this is true, I fail to see the irony.
“Until we ALL have a more responsible attitude towards sex and woman…”
That isn’t how life works. The people who obtain wisdom and knowledge about a subject don’t sit around twiddling their thumbs in hopes that everyone else will also gain the knowledge. No, once obtained knowledge and wisdom are shared to teach others and help them raise up to the same level. The only way ‘all’ will ever have a responsible attitude towards sex women is if those who already *do* share and instruct others. By definition pro-abortionists do *not* have a responsible attitude towards sex, if they did the abortion debate would be theoretical, or perhaps based around killing ‘wanted’ but disabled or otherwise ‘imperfect’ babies. They also by definition do *not* have a responsible attitude towards women, if they did they wouldn’t argue that women are by birth and natural existance inferior to men and need dangerous medical intervention to be ‘equal’.
Those of us who *do* hold a responsible view on sex and women have a duty to do our best to instruct others. Not just because it’s kind and proper to not let someone linger in ignorance like when we teach a child 2+2=4 not 5, but because this particular ignorance is actively harmful to both those who hold it and to society at large.
Xalisae, Pamela: It came up rather quickly. I was out and in the middle of something when Andy gave me the heads up. I was only able to rush home and join in the conversation as it started. That said, I hope ya’ll are following me on Facebook and Twitter? Because these would be the places I post info on quickies like this.
I definitely follow you on Twitter, but I think I need to update my Facebook. Thanks, Jill!
Interesting discussion here. All this talk of “free speech” and whether anyone was denied their “right” to “free speech.”
The freedom of speech merely means that the government cannot prosecute you for your message. This freedom does not guarantee that anyone will listen to you, or that anyone is required to respect you.
In this case, the abortion messagers bumped into a much larger pro-life message.
And Saul Alinsky did not write them any rules on how a radical minority can bully a majority in this age of social media! It’s too easy for concerned people to participate from all over the world now…. it’s a real democracy now!
But we must not celebrate too much. The abortion industry still has a LOT of our money to spend, and the assistance of elitists in Washington and Hollywood. Planned Parenthood is already working on growing their new “message,” whatever it will be.
“So, Kel, there won’t be any whining from the black conservative prolife group who Twitter shut down? After all, Twitter is not a public entity.”
And this has what, exactly, to do with your suggestion that Andy Moore is anti-free speech?
You know, when my kids deflect and redirect like this, I always tell them that’s how I know they’ve realized their mistake.
“I’ve mentioned before that it is helpful to conduct recognizance on the other side’s social networks….”
Did you mean “reconnaissance”?
Twitter suspended my account for a day because they said I follow too many and don’t have enough followers. Apparently some of those on the tweet-chat also reported me as a spammer. Found that part amusing. But I’m glad I was able to participate.
“Twitter suspended my account for a day.”
Sounds like a congratulations are in order, Colleen! =)