Before I engage someone on Twitter, I try to put them into one of three Twitter groups: givers, neutrals, and bullies.
The first group, the givers, are rare. These tweeters are consistently putting out helpful content and amplifying others in a positive way.
The second group, the neutrals, are more common. These tweeters tend to put out factual content, tinged with some fun tweets. They generally don’t engage in controversial issues. I put myself in this category.
The third group, the bullies, are becoming ubiquitous on Twitter. Here I commonly see two sub-groups: the obvious Twitter bully and the subtle Twitter bully. (I am familiar with two domains on Twitter: the writing community and the healthcare community. Oddly, I find the healthcare community to have a much higher percentage of Twitter bullies.)
The obvious Twitter bully attacks people directly, often with heavy use of swear words (in fact, these words are an excellent screening tool). I have a very low threshold to mute or block these folks.
The subtle Twitter bullies are more tricky to spot; they are more dangerous.
At first, they come across nice, but say one thing in opposition to their agenda, and they will become keyboard warriors, attacking you at will. They are usually skilled at using hashtags, comments, screenshots, and retweets, often in a way designed to to attack you without necessarily going after you themselves—a similar tactic to many schoolyard bullies.
To identify these subtle Twitter bullies it’s essential to scroll through their timeline with particular attention their hashtag use. (I try to never comment or retweet someone else’s content without doing at least a preliminary screen.)
Keep in mind these subtle Twitter bullies are small-souled people; they can’t be reasoned with and they are intolerant of any views which differ from their own. They need to be identified as early as possible and not engaged with at all, with early muting as a go-to default.
Be careful out there!