Meet the dudebros who are brosplaining my viral tweet to me

I wrote the other day about all the wonderful feedback from Christians™ I’ve been receiving in the wake of my viral tweet, so I thought I’d follow that up with a post about all the brosplaining I’ve been on the receiving end of.

In case you missed it (somehow), here’s the tweet:

https://twitter.com/aSciEnthusiast/status/1118256899730870278

As I said before, I’m aware that fires can get hotter than 600°C. I never said they couldn’t. And I also never said that metals stay completely resilient up until the very point that they melt. The tweet was a quick joke, and not much more.

But that didn’t stop at least 50 dudebros from messaging me to either explain why I’m “wrong”, or to insult my intelligence.

And yes, it’s been all men who have messaged me about it. Every single one. Not a single woman felt compelled to directly contact me to “correct” me.

I’ve always tried to be careful to avoid “mansplaining” myself. I’m not going to attempt to define it myself because, well, you know.

Lady just asked me what "mansplaining" is. I think it's a trap. We've been staring at each other in silence for half an hour.

— Neil Friday McGourty (@Mcgourty22N) August 1, 2016

So instead I’ll just post the dictionary’s explanation.

But because I’m a man, and these are men explaining something I already understand to me, I’m told it’s brosplaining.

Some of these are pretty harmless, and I can understand they had the best intentions in trying to “explain” it to me.

I know.

“Not to be picky, but allow me to be picky.” Okay.

I. know.

Many thanks, dude. I know.

The above messages illustrate my point, but I cropped their names/faces out of them because they were polite and respectful. They don’t deserve to be publicly shamed for their private behavior. They were engaging in an honest and friendly manner – something I will never, ever put anyone on blast for.

These next ones though? Not so much.

Yeah, totally what I said, dude.

I enjoy his need to put me down to elevate himself up. Classy move!

It’s amusing when people tell me I’m fat. They say it as if i’m not aware that I could lose some weight, as if they’re revealing a hidden truth to me. So not only is he brosplaining my own joke to me, but he’s also brosplaining my weight.

【ＢＲＯＳＰＬＡＩＮＣＥＰＴＩＯＮ】

I’m sure he identifies as a Nice Guy™.

This one wasn’t second-guessing it, he was first-guessing me. Who knew that science – the process of observing, hypothesizing, testing, reviewing, and sharing information isn’t a way to gain knowledge of the world around us? I’m very glad Alex was there to set me straight.

Every time someone puts the word “enthusiast” in quotation marks, an angel gets their wings.

I mean, I assume. Because it happens all the time, and you can tell that each time it happens, the guy thinks he’s being super clever.

You bet wrong, Garrett. Pay up!

I think this next dude thinks that the woman whose tweet I replied to was actually inside the cathedral as it was burning.

Isaiah, don’t kinkshame me. Just because I get rock hard reading stories about CERN does not give you the right to make fun of me for it. Please understand that science is very exciting for me.

And even today, on posts about rockets on my personal account, random internet dudebros are chiming in to let me know how dumb I am.

There are a lot more of these, but there are only so many hours in the day, and I feel like this illustrates my point.

The moral of the story here is, I don’t know, maybe don’t try to act like you’re an expert all the time, guys? Or maybe don’t try to correct details in things that are clearly a joke? I mean, everybody makes mistakes, because nobody is perfect. But when you try to correct a joke, it’s just exhausting.

And I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a woman who has to deal with this bullshit all the time.

Or perhaps the message is if you’re going to disagree with someone online, or correct something that they said, there’s no reason to be a dick about it. I think we’d all do a lot better to, you know, just be nice to one another.

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