By Nontshi Shange

Twitter united this week to hold podcaster, DJ MacG, to account. This followed several wilfully homophobic, and transphobic statements on his show, “Podcast with MacG”.

This incident was not a first for MacG: he was fired from YFM in 2010 for similar comments. This time, he lost his show’s sponsor. As is the case with weaponised social media, though, things went rapidly downhill. We’ll spare you all the details, but things got dark when some “outed” the sexual orientation of a person they disagreed with, and rejoiced over allegedly driving a homophobe to commit suicide.

Social media has become a tool to ignite change – but that fire can rage out of control.

It seems that mere accountability is not enough. We want to see people destroyed. If out-woking each other is the end goal, how do we decide who wins? At the end of the day the real cause – trans people, gay folks, lesbians and more who are routinely brutalised – was lost in all the self-righteous noise.

This brief was originally published in The Wrap here.

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