Librarian faced spate of insults. Thousands of people came to his defense.@mychal3ts is a personal and professional inspiration!
Paywall-free link: https://t.co/DNsQa223tH
— Ian Linkletter (@Linkletter) January 11, 2024
Here’s a nice update to my post about Mr. Threets last week. From the Washington Post, “Librarian faced spate of insults. Thousands of people came to his defense” [gift link]:
Mychal Threets is a self-proclaimed library super fan. He has a tattoo of Arthur Read’s library card on his arm…
Threets, 33, is the supervising librarian at Fairfield Civic Center Library in Solano County, Calif. It’s the library he grew up frequenting as a young boy. Over the past few years, Threets has been sharing snippets of his life as a librarian on social media, in the hope of spreading what he calls “library joy.”…
Recently, though, Threets became the subject of insults on social media.
On Dec. 29, someone shared one of Threets’s library-related videos on X, formerly Twitter, and wrote that “people are getting weirder.” The post continued with additional tweets, including one that used a slur implying people at libraries have developmental delays.
Then came dozens of comments from other people, criticizing Threets’s appearance, voice and mannerisms. Some people called him autistic, which Threets said is incorrect….
The tide turned for Threets when people came to his defense. There were friends and fans — as well as complete strangers.
“Incredible, you took a guy who is passionate about his job of being a librarian and trying to encourage adults and kids to read more/get a library card….and somehow made it negative,” one person commented.
“Have we decayed so much as a society where general wholesome enthusiasm is seen as an undesirable trait?” another person wrote…
Before long, the critical comments were far outnumbered by those that were supportive of Threets.
Palate Cleanser Open Thread: Mychal Threets, WinningPost + Comments (64)